“And your nephew still clings to journalism?”

“Yes, and makes money for nothing but to ride about Paris that way in a cab, and to the country in the railway trains.  The newspaper men are satisfied with him.”

“What does your brother say to all this?”

“He began by turning him out of doors.  But when he knew that some months he made two and three hundred francs, he softened; and then Joseph is as cute as a monkey.  You know my brother invented a cough lozenge, ‘Dervishes’ lozenges’?”

“Yes, you gave me a box of them.”

“Ah! so I did.  Well, Joseph found means to introduce into the account of a murderer’s arrest an advertisement of his father’s lozenges.”—­“How did he do it?”

“He told how the murderer was hidden in a panel, and that he could not be found.  But having the influenza, had sneezed, and that had been the means of his capture.  And Joseph added that this would not have happened to him had he taken the Dervishes Lozenges.  You see that pleased my brother so much that he forgave him.  Ah! there is my wife coming to look for me.  Not a word of all this!  It is not necessary to repeat that there is a reporter in the family, and there is another reason for not telling it.  When I want to sell off to the people of Versailles, I go and find Joseph and tell him of my little plan.  He arranges everything for me as it should be, puts it in the paper quietly, and they don’t know how it comes there!”

A FOREST BETROTHAL

BY ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN

One day in the month of June, 1845, Master Zacharias’ fishing-basket was so full of salmon-trout, about three o’clock in the afternoon, that the good man was loath to take any more; for, as Pathfinder says:  “We must leave some for to-morrow!” After having washed his in a stream and carefully covered them with field-sorrel and rowell, to keep them fresh; after having wound up his line and bathed his hands and face; a sense of drowsiness tempted him to take a nap in the heather.  The heat was so excessive that he preferred to wait until the shadows lengthened before reclimbing the steep ascent of Bigelberg.

Breaking his crust of bread and wetting his lips with a draught of Rikevir, he climbed down fifteen or twenty steps from the path and stretched himself on the moss-covered ground, under the shade of the pine-trees; his eyelids heavy with sleep.

A thousand animate creatures had lived their long life of an hour, when the judge was wakened by the whistle of a bird, which sounded strange to him.  He sat up to look around, and judge his surprise; the so-called bird was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen years of age; fresh, with rosy cheeks and vermilion lips, brown hair, which hung in two long tresses behind her.  A short poppy-colored skirt, with a tightly-laced bodice, completed her costume.  She was a young peasant, who was rapidly descending the sandy path down the side of Bigelberg, a basket poised on her head, and her arms a little sunburned, but plump, were gracefully resting on her hips.