Today's Stichomancy for Umberto Eco

to communicate to you.' She finished her story by describing the embarrassment into which M. de T----'s letter had thrown G---- M----; `he hesitated,' said she, `about leaving, and assured me that he should not be long absent; and it is on this account that I am uneasy at seeing you here, and that I betrayed, at your appearance, some slight feeling of surprise.'

"I listened to her with great patience. There were certainly parts of her recital sufficiently cruel and mortifying; for the intention, at least, of the infidelity was so obvious, that she had not even taken the trouble to disguise it. She could never have imagined that G---- M---- meant to venerate her as a vestal.

of linen, a present from one of those old aunts who, knowing nothing of Paris, think of your shirts, while they imagine that their nephew with thirty francs a month is eating ortolans. The box arrived while I was at the schools; it had cost forty francs for carriage. The porter, a German shoemaker living in a loft, had paid the money and kept the box. I walked up and down the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine without hitting on any scheme which would release my trunk without the payment of the forty francs, which of course I could pay as soon as I should have sold the linen. My stupidity proved to me that surgery was my only vocation. My good fellow,

"with a damned dyer; but I made an end of him,--he bit the dust!"

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Finot, Andoche Cesar Birotteau A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Government Clerks A Start in Life The Firm of Nucingen