Skull-cap of velvet, grizzled whiskers, mouth thin and evil, the eye scrutinizing, distrustful, but not profound, it was just the type of an examining magistrate, one of those men who thinks he has a criminal before him always, like those doctors of the insane who see maniacs everywhere. That one in particular had a certain way of looking at you, so annoying, and so insulting, that you felt guilty without having done anything. With one glance of the eye he terrified all the lobby: “What does all this noise mean?--Try to do your duty a little better,” he said, addressing the guards. Then he closed his door with a sharp click. * * * * * The municipal guard taken to task, red, mortified, looked around a moment for some one upon whom to lay the blame. But the little girl said nothing more, Pignou sat quiet on his bench--All at once he perceived me, and as I was at the door of the hall, almost in the lobby, he took me by the arm and jerked me around brutally. “What are you doing there, you?” BOUM-BOUM BY ARSÈNE ARNAUD CLARETIE [Illustration] _Jules Claretie, as he is known in the literary world, was born at Limoges in 1840, and was educated at Paris, where in 1860 he adopted journalism for a living; contributed a great variety of papers to the journals, under his own name and under the various pseudonyms of Olivier de Salin, Candide, Perdican, etc. In 1885 he became administrator of the Comédie Française, and in 1888 Member of the French Academy. He was Anatole France’s predecessor as editor of “Le Temps.”_ _Claretie has written a great number of works, a “History of the Revolution 1870-1871,” belles-lettres, biographies, criticism, etc. Among his novels may be mentioned the first, “Une Drôlesse,” published in 1862; “Les Muscadins,” “Monsieur le Ministre” which the author dramatized, and “L’Accusateur,” 1897._ [Illustration] BOUM-BOUM BY JULES CLARETIE Translated by Mary Stuart Symonds. Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company. The child was lying stretched out in his little, white bed, and his eyes, grown large through fever, looked straight before him, always with the strange fixity of the sick who already perceive what the living do not see. The mother at the foot of the bed, torn by suffering and wringing her hands to keep herself from crying, anxiously followed the progress of the disease on the poor, emaciated face of the little being. The father, an honest workman, kept back the tears which burned his eyelids.