CI-GIT ARISTIDE VICTOR MALDENT, Capitaine d’Infanterie, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. But such, Captain, was not the inscription devised by yourself to be placed above those old bones of yours--knocked about so long on fields of battle and in haunts of pleasure. Among your papers was found this proud and bitter epitaph, which, despite your last will none could have ventured to put upon your tomb: CI-GIT UN BRIGAND DE LA LOIRE “Therese, we will get a wreath of immortelles to-morrow, and lay them on the tomb of the Brigand of the Loire.”... But Therese is not here. And how, indeed, could she be near me, seeing that I am at the rondpoint of the Champs-Elysees? There, at the termination of the avenue, the Arc de Triomphe, which bears under its vaults the names of Uncle Victor’s companions-in-arms, opens its giant gate against the sky. The trees of the avenue are unfolding to the sun of spring their first leaves, still all pale and chilly. Beside me the carriages keep rolling by to the Bois de Boulogne. Unconsciously I have wandered into this fashionable avenue on my promenade, and halted, quite stupidly, in front of a booth stocked with gingerbread and decanters of liquorice-water, each topped by a lemon. A miserable little boy, covered with rags, which expose his chapped skin, stares with widely opened eyes at those sumptuous sweets which are not for such as he. With the shamelessness of innocence he betrays his longing. His round, fixed eyes contemplate a certain gingerbread man of lofty stature. It is a general, and it looks a little like Uncle Victor. I take it, I pay for it, and present it to the little pauper, who dares not extend his hand to receive it--for, by reason of precocious experience, he cannot believe in luck; he looks at me, in the same way that certain big dogs do, with the air of one saying, “You are cruel to make fun of me like that!” “Come, little stupid,” I say to him, in that rough tone I am accustomed to use, “take it--take it, and eat it; for you, happier than I was at your age, you can satisfy your tastes without disgracing yourself.”...And you, Uncle Victor--you, whose manly figure has been recalled to me by that gingerbread general, come, glorious Shadow, help me to forget my new doll. We remain for ever children, and are always running after new toys. Same day. In the oddest way that Coccoz family has become associated in my mind with the Clerk Alexander. “Therese,” I said, as I threw myself into my easy-chair, “tell me if the little Coccoz is well, and whether he has got his first teeth yet--and bring me my slippers.”