“And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind.  It seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a new, strange and irrefutable logic.  And arguments, reasonings, proofs rose up in a heap before my brain only to be immediately displaced by some stronger proof, reasoning, argument.  My head had, in fact, become a battleground of ideas.  I was a superior being, armed with invincible intelligence, and I experienced a huge delight at the manifestation of my power.

“It lasted a long, long time.  I still kept inhaling the ether from my flagon.  Suddenly I perceived that it was empty.”

The four men exclaimed at the same time: 

“Doctor, a prescription at once for a liter of ether!”

But the doctor, putting on his hat, replied: 

“As to that, certainly not; go and let some one else poison you!”

And he left them.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is your opinion on the subject?

SIMON’S PAPA

Noon had just struck.  The school door opened and the youngsters darted out, jostling each other in their haste to get out quickly.  But instead of promptly dispersing and going home to dinner as usual, they stopped a few paces off, broke up into knots, and began whispering.

The fact was that, that morning, Simon, the son of La Blanchotte, had, for the first time, attended school.

They had all of them in their families heard talk of La Blanchotte; and, although in public she was welcome enough, the mothers among themselves treated her with a somewhat disdainful compassion, which the children had imitated without in the least knowing why.

As for Simon himself, they did not know him, for he never went out, and did not run about with them in the streets of the village, or along the banks of the river.  And they did not care for him; so it was with a certain delight, mingled with considerable astonishment, that they met and repeated to each other what had been said by a lad of fourteen or fifteen who appeared to know all about it, so sagaciously did he wink.  “You know—­Simon—­well, he has no papa.”

Just then La Blanchotte’s son appeared in the doorway of the school.

He was seven or eight years old, rather pale, very neat, with a timid and almost awkward manner.

He was starting home to his mother’s house when the groups of his schoolmates, whispering and watching him with the mischievous and heartless eyes of children bent upon playing a nasty trick, gradually closed in around him and ended by surrounding him altogether.  There he stood in their midst, surprised and embarrassed, not understanding what they were going to do with him.  But the lad who had brought the news, puffed up with the success he had met with already, demanded: 

“What is your name, you?”