Little Poems in Prose

XLIII THE POLITE GUNNER AS the carriage rolled through the wood, he stopped it in the neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that it would be agreeable to him to fire a few shots to kill time. To kill that monster is surely the most ordinary and le- gitimate occupation of all of us, is it not? And he offered politely his hand to his be- loved, delicious, execrable wife, to the myste- rious woman to whom he owes so many pleas- ures, so many sorrows, and perhaps also a great part of his genius. Several balls struck far from the bull’s-eye; one of them even buried itself in the ceiling. And as the charming creature laughed wildly, in mockery of her husband’s bad shooting, he turned sharply towards her and said, “You see that doll down there on the right with its nose in the air and so haughty an expression?— Well, my dear angel, I imagine to myself that it is you,” and he shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was cleanly beheaded.