"I ran perhaps for an hour, perhaps for two, I know not. Darkness had set in, I tumbled over some thick herb, exhausted, and I lay there lost, devoured by terror, eaten up by a sorrow capable of breaking for ever the heart of a poor infant. I became cold, I became hungry. At length day broke. I dared neither get up, walk, return home, nor save myself, fearing to encounter my father whom I did not wish to see again. "I should probably have died of misery and of hunger at the foot of a tree, if the guard had not discovered me and led me away by force. "I found my parents wearing their ordinary aspect. My mother alone spoke to me: "'How you have frightened me, you naughty boy; I have been the whole night sleepless.' "I did not answer, but began to weep. My father did not utter a single word. "Eight days later I entered college. "Well, my friend, it was all over with me. I had witnessed the other side of things, the bad side; I have not been able to perceive the good side since that day. What things have passed in my mind, what strange phenomena has warped my ideas? I do not know. But I no longer have a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, nor ambition, nor hope. And I perceive always my poor mother on the ground, lying in the avenue, while my father is maltreating her. My mother died a few years after; my father lives still. I have not seen him since. Waiter, a 'bock.'" A waiter brought him his "bock," which he swallowed at a gulp. But, in taking up his pipe again, trembling as he was he broke it. Then he made a violent gesture: "Zounds! This is indeed a grief, a real grief. I have had it for a month, and it was coloring so beautifully!" He darted through the vast saloon, which was now full of smoke and of people drinking, uttering his cry: "Waiter, a 'bock'--and a new pipe." REGRET Monsieur Savel, who was called in Mantes, "Father Savel," had just risen from bed. He wept. It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling. They fell slowly in the rain, resembling another rain, but heavier and slower. M. Savel was not in good spirit. He walked from the fireplace to the window, and from the window to the fireplace. Life has its somber days. It will no longer have any but somber days for him now, for he has reached the age of sixty-two. He is alone, an old bachelor, with nobody about him. How sad it is to die alone, all alone, without the disinterested affection of anyone!