The Surprises of Life

thens? The long-standing open question does not yet appear to have been answered. The human race continues to lay the blame on its detracto

nt silhouette surmounted by a bald head, the entire figure running to length, which is, they say, the mark of an immoderate idealism. I remember his small, mocking green eyes, sunk behind the brush of his formidable eyebrows. The long, white side-whisker

from L'Aiguillon, a little port of the Vendée at the mouth of the Lay, had sailed every sea, landed on every island, visited every coast of every continent, and made his studies of all nations on earth from life, which enabled him to criticise his neighbours at every turn by

ft him lord and master of an old middle-class dwelling with large tile-paved rooms in which hung panoplies of tomahawks, javelins, bucklers, boomerangs, in warlike w

Money ran through his fingers, and no outstretched palm ever sought his help in vain. But the possessive pronoun rose readily to his lips when talk turned upon the land. "My dung," "my stones," "my nettles," he was wont to say. He adored his Plain-"Green in springtime, in summer gold," where fleecy crops rippled under the great blue canopy,-pierced along the horizon by steeples suggestive of distant shipping. Flights of plovers in January and ducks in September engaged the doc

ul's history, it is certain that he at every opportunity exercised his fine capacity for indignation against mankind in general, and with particular delight against the specimens of it who happened to be present. Never any coar

ncealed a lie, by which he was no more deceived than was the person favouring him with it. It was no pleasure trip, coming to thank him for

ance?" he would say to a son who came to tell h

d by the veneer of affection people are so fond of exhibiting. The peasant would listen silently, wearing a foolish grin, pretending to be stupid in order to escape the nec

directed by the blackest psychology. But his chief victim was the curé of Ecoulandres, an old friend w

nd the Empire had driven into their fondest dreams. The doctor found vent in wrath, the Abbé in resignation. Fundamentally alike in their wounded ideality, they sought each other out in the obstinate hope

ve been taken for him. The doctor's excuse for frequenting the Abbé was that he could talk to him without stooping. When the two tall silhouettes were

o die before the Abbé, in order to force him to perform an act of supreme hypocrisy by obliging him to bury with every formality the m

bbé. "When on the verge of the gr

ill not

der the painful necessity of letting

my coffin with holy water. You will sing psalms, clad in your finest stole. You will say a mass with al

ng, or I must re

over our earth. We have conquered the right to a peaceful return to nothingness. And now, to foster the illusion of getting even, and to shut yourselves to the very end in your secular spirit, you have devised nothing better than to create an unhallowed portion in the field of eternal rest. The other day, when I went there to select a spot to my liking, did not a fool of a peasant say to me: 'You mustn't be buried there, Doctor, that corner

ever be, my

urely be, my

Christmas Eve, and he was then more than eighty years old), returned home shivering w

ll have been surmised. When he saw

y the bystanders, "do you not think it fitting, i

all there was to be said, and there is nothing more to say. Take the key under my pillow-open

w words, then the head fell back on the pillow. The old man was

hen opened

h wealth in contrast with their own poverty will awaken appropriate sentiment in the souls of my fellow citizens. I desire to be buried in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery, in the spot where six months ago I caused a stake to be driven. If the Church should refuse me her prayers, the disposition above described will

ature were add

e name, in a large, shaky handwriting, which, by the emphasi

ar to him that highest duty lay in presenting every obstacle to Free Masonry. He was obliged to obey. The doctor in his

served for those condemned to death," gained this much by the event, that the earth they lay

rom arousing rebellion in the hearts of the poor, as the doctor had intended, only increased the fervour of the faithful, and provoked the piety of the indifferent by wonder at