"I?"

' < Yes, you ! "What you are trying to do, you dirty Jew, is to disgrace the army. Long live the army! "

They came near taking each other by the hair, and the justice had much difficulty in separating them. Since then Monsieur has stationed perma- nently in the garden two invisible witnesses, behind a sort of board shelter, in which are pierced, at the height of a man, four round holes, for the eyes. But th captain, being warned, is lying low, and Monsieur is out the cost of his watchers.

I have seen the captain two or three times, over the hedge. In spite of the frost, he stays in his garden all day long, working furiously at all sorts of things. For the moment he is putting oil-paper caps on his rose-bushes. He tells me of his mis- fortunes. Rose is suffering from an attack of in- fluenza, and then — with her asthma! . . . Bour- baki is dead. He died of a congestion of the lungs, from drinking too much cognac. Really, the captain has no luck. And surely that bandit of a Lanlaire has cast a spell over him. He wishes to get the upper hand of him, to rid the country of him, and he submits to me an astonishing plan of campaign.

" Here is what you ought to do. Mademoiselle Celestine. You ought to lodge with the