street, and to remember, whenever he saw her, the tales they told about her in Paillot’s shop. Thus he owed some pleasant moments to her and accordingly felt a sort of gratitude towards her. This New Year’s morning he caught sight of her in the porch of Saint-Exupère, as she stood lifting her petticoat with one hand so as to emphasise the pliant bending of the knee, while with the other she held a great prayer-book bound in red morocco. As he gazed, he offered up a mental hymn of thanksgiving to her for thus acting as a charming fairy-tale, a source of subtle pleasure to all the town. This idea he tried to throw into his smile as he passed. Madame de Gromance’s notion of ideal womanhood was not quite the same as M. Bergeret’s. Hers was mingled with many society interests, and being of the world, she had a keen eye to worldly affairs. She was by no means ignorant of the reputation she enjoyed in the town, and hence, whenever she had no special desire to stand in anyone’s good graces, she treated him with cold hauteur. Among such persons she classed M. Bergeret, whose smile seemed merely impertinent. She replied to it, therefore, by a supercilious look which made him blush. As he continued his walk, he said to himself penitently: “She has been a minx. But on my side, I have just made an ass of myself. I see that now; and now that it’s too late, I also see that my smile, which said ‘You are the joy of all the town,’ must have seemed an impertinence. This delicious being is no philosopher emancipated from common prejudices. Of course, she would not understand me: it would be impossible for her to see that I consider her beauty one of the prime forces of the world, and regard the use she makes of it only as a splendid sovereignty. I have been tactless and I am ashamed of it. Like all honourable people, I have sometimes transgressed a human law and yet have felt no repentance for it whatever. But certain other acts of my life, which were merely opposed to those subtle and lofty niceties that we call the conventions, have often filled me with sharp regret and even with a kind of remorse. At this moment I want to hide myself for very shame. Henceforth I shall flee whenever I see the charming vision of this lady of the supple figure, _crispum ... docta movere latus_. I have, indeed, begun the year badly!” “A happy New Year to you,” said a voice that emerged from a beard beneath a straw hat. It belonged to M. Mazure, the archivist to the department. Ever since the Ministry had refused him academic honours on the ground that he had no claim, and since all classes in the town steadily refused to return Madame Mazure’s calls, because she had been both cook and mistress to the two officials previously in charge of the archives, M. Mazure had been seized with a horror of all government and become disgusted with society. He lived now the life of a gloomy misanthrope.