the two second-floor windows pleasantly warmed by lights, of which one is, perhaps, she herself. But they take no sort of shape, and remain in another world. At last my eyes leave that constellation of windows among the trees, that vertical and silent firmament. Then I make for my home, in this evening which comes at the end of all the days I have lived. * * * * * * Little Antoinette,--how comes it that they leave her all alone like this?--is standing in my path and holding a hand out towards me. It is her way that she is begging for. I guide her, ask questions and listen, leaning over her and making little steps. But she is too little, and too lispful, and cannot explain. Carefully I lead the child,--who sees so feebly that already she is blind in the evening, as far as the low door of the dilapidated dwelling where she nests. In my street, in front of his lantern-shaped house, with its iron-grilled dormer, old Eudo is standing, darkly hooded, and pointed, like the house. I am a little afraid of him. Assuredly, he has not got a clean conscience. But, however guilty, he is compassionable. I stop and speak to him. He lifts to me out of the night of his hood a face pallid and ruined. I speak about the weather, of approaching spring. Heedless he hears, shapes "yes" with the tip of his lips, and says, "It's twelve years now since my wife died; twelve years that I've been utterly alone; twelve years that I've heard the last words she said to me." And the poor maniac glides farther away, hooded in his unintelligible mourning; and certainly he does not hear me wish him good-night. At the back of the cold downstairs room a fire has been lighted. Mame is sitting on the stool beside it, in the glow of the flaming coal, outstretching her hands, clinging to the warmth. Entering, I see the bowl of her back. Her lean neck has a cracked look and is white as a bone. Musingly, my aunt takes and holds a pair of idle tongs. I take my seat. Mame does not like the silence in which I wrap myself. She lets the tongs fall with a jangling shock, and then begins vivaciously to talk to me about the people of the neighborhood. "There's everything here. No need to go to Paris, nor even so much as abroad. This part; it's a little world cut out on the pattern of the others," she adds, proudly, wagging her worn-out head. "There aren't many of them who've got the wherewithal and they're not of much account. Puppets, if you like, yes. That's according to how one sees it, because at bottom there's no puppets,--there's people that look after themselves, because each of us always deserves to be happy, my lad. And here, the same as everywhere, the two kinds of people that