The baron slept in a corner of the room on several travelling blankets. He made a fart which caused his better half to laugh until the tears came. Macarée wept, cried, laughed and a few moments later brought into the world a sturdy child of the male sex. Then, exhausted by these efforts, she rendered up her soul, with a scream that was like the ululation of the eternal first wife of Adam, when she crossed the Red Sea. In reporting the above, I believe that I have elucidated the important question of the birthplace of Croniamantal. Let the 123 towns in 7 countries dispute the honor of his birth.[3] We know now, and the state records bear testimony that he was born of the paternal fart at _Napoule of the golden skies_, on the 25th of August, 1889, but not announced at the mayoralty until the following morning.[4] It was the year of the Universal Exposition, and the Eiffel Tower, which was just born, saluted the heroic birth of Croniamantal with a beautiful erection. The baron des Ygrées made another fart which woke him by the macabre bed where the corpse of Macarée reclined. The child cried, the midwives croaked, the father sobbed, and declaimed: "Ah, Napoule with the golden skies, I have killed my hen with the golden eyes!" Then he bathed the new-born calling him by a name which he invented forthwith and which did not belong to any saint in Paradise: CRONIAMANTAL. He left on the following day, having arranged for the funeral of his spouse, written the necessary letters assuring his inheritance, and announced the child under the names of Gaëtan—Francis—Etienne—Jack—Amélie—Alonso des Ygrées. And with this nursling whose putative father he was, he took the train for the Principality of Monaco.[5] VIII. MAMMON A widower, François des Ygrées established himself near the principality; on the grounds of Roquebrune; he took pension with a family, which included a pretty brunette called Mia. There he reared the bearer of his own name with the baby-bottle. Often he would go out at dawn for a walk at the sea shore. The road was fringed with amaryllis which he would always compare involuntarily with packages of dried cod. Sometimes, because of the contrary winds, he would turn to light an Egyptian cigarette whose smoke rose in spirals like the bluish mountains emerging far off in Italy. * * * The family in whose bosom he had installed himself was composed of the father, the mother and Mia. M. Cecchi, a Corsican, was a croupier at the casino. He had previously been croupier at Baden-Baden and had married a German woman there. Of this union Mia was born; her carnation tint and black hair bespoke her Corsican blood. She was always dressed in buoyant colors. Her walk was balanced, her figure arched; she was smaller at the breast than at the buttocks, and a touch of strabism lent her dark eyes a somewhat distraught look, which only rendered her more tempting.