SCENES I., II., AND IIL

In a little country town there lived a veterinary surgeon and also a retired merchant named Caboussat. The surgeon had a son and the merehant had a daughter named Blanche. The children used to play together, and one day they gathered strawberries in Blanche's garden, which was smooth and grassy. When they had finished, Blanche carried the berries to the house in her apron, and asked the servant for the gilt salad-bowl to put them in. But he had just broken it, and he was going to bury it in the garden near an apricottree.

One day the veterinary surgeon went to see a cow which belonged to the merchant. But his visit was useless, for the cow had swallowed a bit of a glass décanter and had died from it. Mr. Caboussat was an ambitious man, and at this time he wanted to be président of the agricultural society. His opponent had been a lawyer and was somewhat diplomatie. He had been talking to the peasants for a month past, and, one Sunday, he had brought from Paris some red balloons which he gave to the children. The veterinary surgeon, who was a great friend of Mr. Caboussat's, had got even with the other candidate by telling the people that thèse balloons attracted hail, whereupon they burst them.

Mr. Caboussat had the réputation of being a quiet, well-informed man, almost a scholar, for he would sit for whole hours with a book in his hand. Everyone thought that he was reading Greek or Latin, but in reality it was a grammar he was studying. He could not understand the agreement of the participles, and his head would ache with the effort he made to learn it. He had the idea that if he were elected président of the agricultural society he might become mayor, and wear the municipal Bcarf, then councillor for the district and at

Exercises for Composition. 83

last deputy. But some of bhe people thought him pioud, and had a grudge against him for it. He certainly asked the voters about their wives, but he forgot to admire their cabbages. When the surgeon pointed out to him that the people held that this would be his duty as président of the agricultural society, he at once put on his new hat and started out to ask the peasantry for some of their cabbage seed.