Fougas would be a great deal better, but Langevin is not bad." He arrived, on the 2d of September, at six o'clock in the evening, at that large and beautiful but somewhat stupid city which constitutes the Versailles of Lorraine.

His heart was beating fit to burst.

To recuperate his energies, he took a good dinner.

The landlord, when catechized at dessert, gave him the very best accounts of M.Victor Langevin: a man still young, married for the past six years, father of a boy and a girl, respected in the neighborhood, and prosperous in his affairs.
"I was sure of it!" said Fougas.
He poured down a bumper of a certain kirsch-wasser from the Black Forest, which he fancied delicious with his maccaroni.
The same evening, M.Langevin related to his wife how, on returning from the club at ten o'clock, he had been brutally accosted by a drunken man.
He at first took him for a robber, and prepared to defend himself; but the man contented himself with embracing him, and then ran away with all his might.

This singular accident threw the two spouses into a series of conjectures, each less probable than the preceding.