mischievous eyes made many victims. But time had passed that way! What a deplorable passage, that of time,—a passage which should be well barricaded!

It was not that Madame Glumeau’s features had changed very much. No, her eyes were still very bright, her nose rather delicate; her hair, which was yet black, still fell in thick curls on each side of her face; but she had grown enormously stout, so that her whole figure was changed and her waist enlarged.

Even the face had undergone the influence of that exuberant health; the cheeks had become rotund, the chin had trebled, the neck had shortened, and the complexion had become purple; and there were people who were cruel enough to say to her:

“What perfect health you enjoy! No one needs to ask you how you are!”

At that compliment, Madame Glumeau would try to smile, as she replied:

“That is true, I am not often ill!”

But in the depths of her heart she bitterly lamented having become like a ball, and would willingly have submitted to a severe illness, in order to recover her figure of earlier days. However, as one is always inclined to flatter oneself a little, Madame Glumeau was very far from considering herself a tower, as her dear lady friends called her; and when she looked at herself in the mirror, she still bestowed upon herself a satisfied smile.

Let us come to the two children; we are not speaking of little brats, who have to be led along by the hand, but of a boy of nineteen and a young lady of sixteen.

The young man was very ill-favored; he had no one of his mother’s features, and squinted in too pronounced a fashion, a fact which necessarily imparted more or less vagueness to his countenance; but one might judge from the expression of his face that Monsieur Astianax—that was young Glumeau’s name—was not displeased with his little person, and still less with his wit. Unluckily, nature had not bestowed upon him a figure corresponding to the advantages with which he considered himself to be endowed; despite the high heels that he wore and the double soles that he put in his shoes, Monsieur Astianax Glumeau had been unable to make himself taller than his mother, who was four feet nine.

If young Glumeau was short, his sister, by way of compensation, at sixteen, was as tall as a bean-pole, and threatened to attain the stature of a drum-major. As thin as her mother was stout, Eolinde Glumeau had at all events a face which did her honor; although she was not so pretty as her mother had once been, she had regular features, rather large eyes, a small mouth, fine teeth, and all the freshness of a peach still on the tree. But—for there were always buts in that family—Mademoiselle Eolinde was afflicted with a very noticeable defect of speech; she stuttered in a way that was very tiresome to those who listened to her. Her parents declared that that would cure itself, and as a corrective to that infirmity they insisted that their daughter should talk as much as possible. Mademoiselle Eolinde obeyed her parents to an extent that was sometimes very terrible for her friends and acquaintances.

The Glumeau family had been on Boulevard du Château d’Eau a long while, going from one dealer to another, stopping in front of the flowers, sticking their noses into the finest ones, asking the price, hesitating, and not deciding.

At last Madame Glumeau turned about once more and halted in front of a very handsome pomegranate tree, saying:

“I think I will buy this pomegranate for your father. A pomegranate will please Honoré; he will like it very much.”

“But, mamma, what connection is there between this shrub and my father?” queried young Glumeau, looking toward Boulevard du Temple and Porte Saint-Martin at the same moment.

“What’s that! what connection? What do you mean by that, Astianax? Isn’t to-morrow your father’s fête-day, as his name is Honoré? We are going to give him flowers as usual. I select this pomegranate, which is very handsome; I don’t see what there is in that to surprise you.”

“It isn’t that, mamma; I said: ‘what connection is there between a pomegranate—grenadier—and my father, who has never been a soldier?’ Oh! if he had been a soldier, I could understand your choice of this shrub and the allusion, but——”

“But, my dear boy, you are terribly tiresome with your allusions; you want to put allusions in everything; just wait until you are a man.”

“Excuse me, dear mamma, but flowers have a language; so in your place I should have thought that a myrtle, the emblem of love——”

“My dear boy, I have been giving your father myrtles for twenty years and he must have had enough of them. Everything in life goes by, and we have used the myrtle long enough; it seems to me that I can properly vary it a little. After twenty years one is not forbidden to change bouquets. I have decided, I am going to buy this pomegranate.—Don’t you think, Eolinde, that this will please your father?”

“Oh! ye—ye—yes, it will pl—please him very mu—u—uch.”

“But what are you going to buy for him? You must make up your mind, children, for we intend to go to the play after dinner, and it is getting late.”

“B—b—bless me!” replied the tall young lady, “I would li—i—ike that fl—fl—flower—you know—you know—it’s the—I d—d—don’t see it.”

“But what flower? tell us its name.”

“I d—d—don’t reme—e—ember.”

“In that case, ask the woman if she has any,” said Monsieur Astianax, smiling maliciously, for he very often made fun of the difficulty which his sister had in speaking.

“What a stu—u—u—pid you are, Astianax!” cried the girl, shrugging her shoulders and looking down at her brother as if she were searching for a little dog. “Let me alo—o—one; it’s a flow—ower with b—b—bells.”

“Bells?”

“No, little bell-flowers—brown.”

“Oh, I know what you mean, daughter; it is a—I don’t know the name; but come, I saw some over yonder.”

And the stout lady, having paid for the pomegranate and hired a porter to carry it, led her daughter to the booth of a dealer who had a large assortment of tulips. Mademoiselle Eolinde examined them for some time, then murmured:

“This isn’t what I wanted. No matter, let me see. Oh! they don’t smell—they don’t smell of anything; I’d rather get something else.”

“Well, what? Come, choose.”

“Oh! see that fl—flower over there; a m—m—mag—no——”

“The name makes no difference, let us go and buy it.”

Mademoiselle Eolinde stopped in front of a magnificent magnolia, which had already flowered in the heat of a greenhouse; she placed her nose upon the lovely white egg-shaped blossom, which, as it opened, exhaled a delicious odor of orange and lemon; then she raised her head and said: “That smells too strong.”

“Look here, mamzelle!” cried the flower woman, irritated to see the tall girl take her mother away in another direction, “you mustn’t stick your face on our flowers like that! Did anyone ever see such a bean-pole as that creature who buries her muzzle in the blossom of my magnolia, and then walks off, as if she had been sniffing at my poodle’s tail! Go on, you long-legged cockroach! Go somewhere else and buy Indian pinks, they’ll suit you better!”

The Glumeau family did not hear, or rather pretended not to hear the somewhat forcible complaints of the woman with the magnolia; they had stopped in front of a booth where there was a large quantity of laurel. Mademoiselle Eolinde, whom the lesson which she had just received had not corrected, smelled several laurel bushes and cried:

“Ah! that sm—smells nasty!”

This time Madame Glumeau hastily dragged her daughter away, saying in her ear: