pond, and hear a report from time to time. If you ask the reason for this shooting, you will be told that it is to bring the eels out of their hiding-places. But why do eels come out of the mud when they hear the report of a gun? Why do they make for the water which still runs in little rivulets at the bottom of the pond? Why, in short, being safe at the bottom of the mud, like other good friends of our acquaintance who have the good sense to remain there, do the eels not stay there, instead of wriggling back into a stream of water, which carries them along with it, and finally lands them in the reservoir, that is in the common grave? The Collège de France would find nothing easier than to answer this question, under existing circumstances; so I put this question to its learned members: Is not the idea of the gun a pure superstition, and is not the following solution the right and simple one? The mud in which the eel takes refuge is at first liquid, but gradually becomes drier and drier, like a sponge when squeezed, and so becomes more and more uninhabitable for it, and so, in the long run, it is obliged to get back to its natural element—the water. The water once reached, the eel is lost; but it is not till the fifth or sixth day after the emptying of the pond, that the eels are caught.
It was to a fête of this kind that everyone at Villers-Cotterets, at Crespy, at Mont-Gobert, and in the surrounding villages had been invited. Thibault went like everybody else; he had now no need to work, finding it simpler to allow the wolves to work for him. From a workman he had risen to be a man at ease, it now only remained to make himself a gentleman, and Thibault counted upon being able to do this. He was not a man to allow himself to remain in the rear, and he therefore made good use of his arms and legs so as to secure a place in the front row. In the course of this manoeuvre he happened to rumple the dress of a tall, fine woman, next to whom he was trying to install himself. The lady was fond of her clothes, and no doubt, also, she was in the habit of commanding, which naturally produces an attitude of disdain, for, turning to see who had brushed past her, she let fall the uncompromising