“I asked no questions, for what was the good of trying to understand?  Besides, the old woman, who grew more and more terrified, could not find any French words, and chattered wildly.  I jumped up and got into my shoes and overcoat and ran down the stairs, and in the street.

“Ten minutes later, I recovered my breath and my senses, without knowing what streets I had been through, nor where I had come from, and I stole furtively into my hotel, as if I had been a malefactor.

“In the cafes the next morning, nothing was talked of except a crime that had been committed during the night.  A German baron had killed his wife with a revolver, but he had been liberated on bail, as he had appealed to his counsel, to whom he had given the following explanation, to the truth of which the lady companion of the baroness had certified.

“She had been married to her husband almost by force, and detested him, and she had some particular reasons (which were not specified) for her hatred of him.  In order to have her revenge on him, she had had him seized, bound and gagged by four hired ruffians, who had been caught, and who had confessed everything.  Thus, reduced to immobility, and unable to help himself, the baron had been obliged to witness a degrading scene, where his wife caressed a Frenchman, and thus outraged conjugal fidelity and German honor at the same time.  As soon as he was set at liberty, the baron had punished his faithless wife, and was now seeking her accomplice.”

“And what did you do?” someone asked Pierre Dufaille.

“The only thing I could do, by George!” he replied.  “I put myself at the poor devil’s disposal; it was his right, and so we fought a duel.  Alas!  It was with swords, and he ran me right through the body.  That was also his right, but he exceeded his right when he called me her ponce.  Then I gave him his chance, and as I fell, I called out with all the strength that remained to me:  ‘A Frenchman!  A Frenchman!  Long live France!’”

THE DOUBLE PINS

“Ah; my-dear fellow, what jades women are!”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because they have played me an abominable trick.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Women, or a woman?”

“Two women.”

“Two women at once?”

“Yes.”

“What was the trick?”

The two young men were sitting outside a cafe on the Boulevards, and drinking liquors mixed with water, those aperients which look like infusions of all the shades in a box of water-colors.  They were nearly the same age, twenty-five to thirty.  One was dark and the other fair, and they had the same semi-elegant look of stock-jobbers, of men who go to the Stock Exchange, and into drawing-rooms, who are to be seen everywhere, who live everywhere, and love everywhere.  The dark one continued.

“I have told you of my connection with that little woman, a tradesman’s wife, whom I met on the beach at Dieppe?”