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298 "Mine?"

I contracted my two hands into the shape of talons, and, pretending to claw a face ferociously, I answered:

"My nails, in their eyes!"

The butler, without being asked, remarked quietly, while arranging flowers and fruits in a glass dish with his fastidious fingers:

"I would be satisfied to sprinkle their faces in church with a bottle of good vitriol."

And he stuck a rose between two pears.

Oh! yes, how we love them! The extraordinary thing is that these.revenges are not taken more frequently. When I think that a cook, for in- stance, holds her masters’ lives in her hands every day; a pinch of arsenic instead of salt, a little dash of strychnine instead of vinegar, and the thing is done. Well, no, it must be that we have servitude in our very blood!

I have no education, and I write what I think and what I have seen. Well, I say that all this is not beautiful. I say that from the moment when any one installs another under his roof, though he were the last of poor devils, or the lowest of disreputable girls, he owes them protection, he owes them happiness. I say also that, if the master does not give it to us, we have a right to take it, even from his strong-box, even from his blood.

But enough of this! I do wrong to think of