to walk very slowly through the silent streets. Miette held me by the left hand, and with the fingers of my right I clasped the bits of money tightly and felt that one was larger than the other. The shops were nearly all shut, but in most of the windows lights were still burning. To reach home we had to turn an angle of the cathedral and pass before the very shop,—the shop of old Commolet. My nurse, whom we called the Ant (don't you remember you named her because you saw a likeness in her to that industrious insect?)—well, she never talked, and I was looking about at that queer corner of the old town which seemed just then very weird. The graceful buttresses of the church stood darkly forth against their covering of snow. The heavens sparkled with stars, and Commolet's shop was close by. The image of that sabre flamed suddenly before my eyes with more intensity than ever, and I reflected that it might be mine if that bit, that little bit of gold, which I felt in my hand, belonged to me. Hardly had the two ideas entered my mind before they welded themselves together. 'If that bit of gold belonged to me? But, if I choose, it will belong to me. What hinders me from giving, not this bit but the other bit to a beggar? Who will see me do it? Besides, if I had told my desire to my cousin he would have given the ten francs to me; he is so kind and good.'—I had reached this
