other Eugène's, one yellow, the other red; his costume is completed by an old pair of black trousers covered with stains of paint and a nightshirt.
The soap does not dissolve readily in the cold water; it becomes sticky and slippery, and when he tightens his grasp in order to hold it, it flies from his fingers just as one discharges a cherry-pit from between the thumb and index.
Arthur stoops and places his hand upon it; the soap slips from his fingers and disappears beneath the sofa. He takes a cane and pokes about with it under the sofa; the cane hits the soap and sends it out flying; the door is open and the soap makes its way out; Arthur follows in hot pursuit, but it skips. across the landing and slipping, slipping all the time, hops" downward from floor to floor; twice Arthur overtakes it and tries to stop it with his foot, but it only descends the faster. Arthur makes his way down as quickly as his slippers will permit; he passes a woman and child and comes near upsetting them; he tears one of the sleeves of his shirt completely off against a clothes-hook. The soap has brought up in the court at last; Arthur is about to seize it when a servant-girl, who has been washing clothes at the pump, empties her pail, and the minature flood carries the soap out beneath the porte cochère.
"Door, if you please!"
Arthur steps outside and picks up his soap from between a horse's legs, but people in the street stop and stare at him. He makes haste to re-enter the house; on every landing he encounters neighbors who have come out of their rooms to learn the cause of the racket that he made in descending. Some of
