peculiarity of women to never think of the future; it is not mine...´ The minister was in Paris. His hotel was only a foot from rue Sainte-Marguerite. Tanié met with him there and was hired. He returned with eyes dry and heart wrung out. `Madame,´ he said to her, `I saw M. de Maurepas; I have given him my word. I will go, I will go. And you will be satisfied.´ `Oh! My love!...´ Madame Reymer drops her line of work, throws herself on Tanié, tosses her arms around his neck, devastates him with kisses and sweet nothings. `Ah! It is times like these that let me know I am dear to you!´ Tanié answered her coldly: `You want to be rich.´ --She was, the little minx, ten times more so than she was worth... --`And you will be. Since it is gold that you love, you must seek it out.´ It was Tuesday, and the minister had set the date of departure for Friday without delay. I bid him farewell as he was wrestling with himself, attempting to wrest himself from the arms of the beautiful, disgraceful and cruel Reymer. Of such a disorder of ideas, hopelessness, agony, I have never seen a second example. This was not a wail; it was an extended scream. Madame Reymer was still in bed. He held one of her hands. He could not stop saying and repeating: `Cruel woman! Woman cruel! What more do you need than the comfort you enjoy, and a friend, a lover such as myself? I have tried to find fortune in the sweltering countries of America; she wants me to seek it out once more in the ice floes of the North. My friend, I am aware that this woman is mad; I am aware that I am foolish, but I am less afraid of death than I am of causing her sadness. You want me to leave you; I will leave you.´ He was on his knees beside her bed, mouth glued to her hand and face hidden in the covers, which, in stifling his mutterings, only made them sadder and more dreadful. The bedroom door opened; his head rose up brusquely; he saw the coachman who had come to announce that the horses were hitched up. He cried out, and again hid his face under the covers. After a moment´s silence, he rose, he said to his love, `Kiss me, madame. Kiss me one more time, for you will never see me again.´ His premonition was only too accurate. He departed. He arrived in Petersburg and, three days later, was struck by a fever from which he died on the fourth. --I knew all of that. --Perhaps you were one of Tanié´s successors? --You got it. And it is with this abominable beauty that I ruined my business. --Poor Tanié! --There are some who would call him silly. --I will not defend him, but I will wish from the bottom of my heart that their bad luck sends them to a woman as beautiful and duplicitous as Madame Reymer. --You are cruel in your choice of revenge. --Moving on, if there are evil women and good men, there are also good women and evil men. And this supplement is no more a story[2] than the preceding. --I am sure. --M. d´Hérouville...