"Pardon, my friend," said he, "what are you doing there?"

"You shall hear, monsieur," replied Aristide, clutching the drumsticks.

"For the love of Heaven!" cried the other hastily interrupting. "Tell me what are you doing?"

"I am crying the loss of a bracelet, monsieur!"

"But who are you?"

"I am Aristide Pujol, and I play the drum, kettle-drum, triangle, cymbals, castagnettes and tambourine in the orchestra of the Tournee Gulland. And now, in my turn, may I ask to whom I have the honour of speaking?"

"I am the Mayor of Perpignan."

Aristide raised his hat politely. "I hope to have the pleasure," said he, "of Monsieur le Maire's better acquaintance."

The Mayor, attracted by the rascal's guileless mockery, laughed.

"You will, my friend, if you go on playing that drum. You are not the Town Crier."

Aristide explained. Pere Bracasse was ill, suffering from rheumatism, bronchitis, fever and corns. He was replacing him. The Mayor retorted that Pere Bracasse being a municipal functionary could not transmit his functions except through the Administration. Monsieur Pujol must desist from drumming and crying. Aristide bowed to authority and unstrung his drum.

"But I was enjoying myself so much, Monsieur le Maire. You have spoiled my day," said he.

The Mayor laughed again. There was an irresistible charm and roguishness about the fellow, with his intelligent oval face, black Vandyke beard and magically luminous eyes.

"I should have thought you had enough of drums in your orchestra."

"Ah! there I am cramped!" cried Aristide. "I have it in horror, in detestation. Here I am free. I can give vent to all the aspirations of my soul!"

The Mayor mechanically moved from the spot where they had been standing. Aristide, embroidering his theme, mechanically accompanied him; and, such is democratic France, and also such was the magnetic, Ancient Mariner-like power of Aristide—did not I, myself, on my first meeting with him at Aigues-Mortes fall helplessly under the spell—that, in a few moments, the amateur Town Crier and the Mayor were walking together, side by side, along the Quai Sadi-Carnot, engaged in amiable converse. Aristide told the Mayor the story of his life—or such incidents of it as were meet for Mayoral ears—and when they parted—the Mayor to lunch, Aristide to yield up the interdicted drum to Pere Bracasse—they shook hands warmly and mutually expressed the wish that they would soon meet again.

They met again; Aristide saw to that. They met again that very afternoon in the cafe on the Place Arago. When Aristide entered he saw the Mayor seated at a table in the company of another prosperous, red-ribboned gentleman. Aristide saluted politely and addressed the Mayor. The Mayor saluted and presented him to Monsieur Querin, the President of the Syndicat d'Initiative of the town of Perpignan. Monsieur Querin saluted and declared himself enchanted at the encounter. Aristide stood gossiping until the Mayor invited him to take a place at the table and consume liquid refreshment. Aristide glowingly accepted the invitation and cast a look of triumph around the cafe. Not to all mortals is it given to be the boon companion of a Mayor and a President of the Syndicat d'Initiative!

Then ensued a conversation momentous in its consequences.

The Syndicat d'Initiative is a semi-official body existing in most provincial towns in France for the purpose of organising public festivals for the citizens and developing the resources and possibilities of the town for the general amenity of visitors. Now Perpignan is as picturesque, as sun-smitten and, in spite of the icy tramontana, even as joyous a place as tourist could desire; and the Carnival of Perpignan, as a spontaneous outburst of gaiety and pageantry, is unique in France. But Perpignan being at the end of everywhere and leading nowhere attracts very few visitors. Biarritz is on the Atlantic coast at the other end of the Pyrenees; Hyeres, Cannes and Monte Carlo on the other side of the Gulf of Lions. No English or Americans—the only visitors of any account in the philosophy of provincial France—flock to Perpignan. This was a melancholy fact bewailed by Monsieur Querin. The town was perishing from lack of Anglo-Saxon support. Monsieur Coquereau, the Mayor, agreed. If the English and Americans came in their hordes to this paradise of mimosa, fourteenth century architecture, sunshine and unique Carnival, the fortunes of all the citizens would be assured. Perpignan would out-rival Nice. But what could be done?

"Advertise it," said Aristide. "Flood the English-speaking world with poetical descriptions of the place. Build a row of palatial hotels in the new part of the town. It is not known to the Anglo-Saxons."

"How can you be certain of that?" asked Monsieur Querin.

"Parbleu!" he cried, with a wide gesture. "I have known the English all my life. I speak their language as I speak French or my native Provencal. I have taught in schools in England. I know the country and the people like my pocket. They have never heard of Perpignan."

His companions acquiesced sadly. Aristide, aglow with a sudden impudent inspiration, leant across the marble table.

"Monsieur le Maire and Monsieur le President du Syndicat d'Initiative, I am sick to death of playing the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine in the Tournee Gulland. I was born to higher things. Entrust to me"—he converged the finger-tips of both hands to his bosom—"to me, Aristide Pujol, the organisation of Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir, and you will not regret it."

The Mayor and the President laughed.

* * * * *

But my astonishing friend prevailed—not indeed to the extent of being appointed a Petronius, arbiter elegantiarum, of the town of Perpignan; but to the extent of being employed, I fear in a subordinate capacity, by the Mayor and the Syndicat in the work of propagandism. The Tournee Gulland found another drum and went its tuneful but weary way; and Aristide remained gloriously behind and rubbed his hands with glee. At last he had found permanence in a life where heretofore had been naught but transience. At last he had found a sphere worthy of his genius. He began to nourish insensate ambitions. He would be the Great Benefactor of Perpignan. All Roussillon should bless his name. Already he saw his statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot.

His rise in the social scale of the town was meteoric, chiefly owing to the goodwill of Madame Coquereau, the widowed mother of the Mayor. She was a hard-featured old lady, with a face that might have been made of corrugated iron painted yellow and with the eyes of an old hawk. She dressed always in black, was very devout and rich and narrow and iron-willed. Aristide was presented to her one Sunday afternoon at the Cafe on the Place Arago—where on Sunday afternoons all the fashion of Perpignan assembles—and—need I say it?—she fell at once a helpless victim to his fascination. Accompanying her grandmother was Mademoiselle Stephanie Coquereau, the Mayor's niece (a wealthy orphan, as Aristide soon learned), nineteen, pretty, demure, perfectly brought up, who said "Oui, Monsieur" and "Non, Monsieur" with that quintessence of modest grace which only a provincial French Convent can cultivate.

Aristide's heart left his body and rolled at the feet of Mademoiselle Stephanie. It was a way with Aristide's heart. It was always doing that. He was of Provence and not of Peckham Rye or Hoboken, and he could not help it.

Aristide called on Madame Coquereau, who entertained him with sweet Frontignan wine, dry sponge cakes and conversation. After a while he was invited to dinner. In a short space of time he became the intimate friend of the house, and played piquet with Madame Coquereau, and grew familiar with the family secrets. First he learned that Mademoiselle Stephanie would go to a husband with two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Aristide's heart panted at the feet of Mademoiselle Stephanie. Further he gathered that, though Monsieur Coquereau was a personage of great dignity and importance in civic affairs, he was as but a little child in his own house. Madame Coquereau held the money-bags. Her son had but little personal fortune. He had reached the age of forty-five without being able to marry. Marriage unauthorized by Madame Coquereau meant immediate poverty and the testamentary assignment of Madame Coquereau's fortune to various religious establishments. None of the objects of Monsieur Coquereau's matrimonial desire had pleased Madame Coquereau, and none of Madame Coquereau's blushing candidates had caused a pulse in Monsieur Coquereau's being to beat the faster. The Mayor held his mother in professed adoration and holy terror. She held him in abject subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "Oui, Monsieur" and "Non, Monsieur," in a crescendo of maddening demureness.

So passed the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of the Mayor's office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the blush, and in the evening played piquet with Madame Coquereau, while Mademoiselle Stephanie, model of modest piety, worked pure but nameless birds and flowers on her embroidery frame. Monsieur le Maire, of course, played his game of manilla at the cafe, after dinner, and generally came home just before Aristide took his leave. If it had not been for the presence of Mademoiselle Stephanie, it would not have been gay for Aristide. But love gilded the moments.

On the first evening of the Carnival, which lasts nearly a fortnight in Perpignan, Aristide, in spite of a sweeter "Oui, Monsieur" than ever from Mademoiselle Stephanie, made an excuse to slip away rather earlier than usual, and, front door having closed behind him, crossed the strip of gravel with a quick step and flung out of the iron gates. Now the house had an isolated position in the new quarter of the town. It was perky and modern and defaced by all sorts of oriel windows and tourelles and pinnacles which gave it a top-heavy appearance, and it was surrounded by a low brick wall. Aristide, on emerging through the iron gates, heard the sound of scurrying footsteps on the side of the wall nearest to the town, and reached the corner, just in time to see a masquer, attired in a Pierrot costume and wearing what seemed to be a pig's head, disappear round the further angle. Paying no heed to this phenomenon, Aristide lit a cigarette and walked, in anticipation of enjoyment, to the great Avenue des Plantanes where the revelry of the Carnival was being held. Aristide was young, he loved flirtation, and flirtation flourished in the Avenue des Plantanes.

The next morning the Mayor entered his office with a very grave face.

"Do you know what has happened? My house was broken into last night. The safe in my study was forced open, and three thousand francs and some valuable jewelry were stolen. Quel malheur!" he cried, throwing himself into a chair, and wiping his forehead. "It is not I who can afford to lose three thousand francs at once. If they had robbed maman it would have been a different matter."

Aristide expressed his sympathy.

"Whom do you suspect?" he asked.

"A robber, parbleu!" said the Mayor. "The police are even now making their investigations."

The door opened and a plain clothes detective entered the office.

"Monsieur le Maire," said he, with an air of triumph, "I know a burglar."

Both men leapt to their feet.

"Ah!" said Aristide.

"A la bonne heure!" cried the Mayor.

"Arrest him at once," said Aristide.

"Alas, Monsieur," said the detective, "that I cannot do. I have called on him this morning and his wife tells me that he left for the North yesterday afternoon. But it is Jose Puegas that did it. I know his ways."

"Tiens!" said the Mayor, reflectively. "I know him also, an evil fellow."

"But why are you not looking for him?" exclaimed Aristide.

"Arrangements have been made," replied the detective coldly.

Aristide suddenly bethought him of the furtive masquer of the night before.

"I can put you on his track," said he, and related what he knew.

The Mayor looked dubious. "It wasn't he," he remarked.

"Jose Puegas, Monsieur, would not commit a burglary in a pig's head," said the policeman, with the cutting contempt of the expert.

"It was a vow, I suppose," said Aristide, stung to irony. "I've always heard he was a religious man."

The detective did not condescend to reply.

"Monsieur le Maire," said he, "I should like to examine the premises, and beg that you will have the kindness to accompany me."

"With the permission of Monsieur le Maire," said Aristide. "I too will come."

"Certainly," said the Mayor. "The more intelligences concentrated on the affair the better."

"I am not of that opinion," said the detective.

"It is the opinion of Monsieur le Maire," said Aristide rebukingly, "and that is enough."

When they reached the house—distances are short in Perpignan—they found policemen busily engaged with tape measures around the premises. Old Madame Coquereau in a clean white linen dressing jacket, bare-headed, defying the keen air, stood grim and eager in the midst of them.

"Good morning, Monsieur Pujol, what do you think of this?"

"A veritable catastrophe," said Aristide.

She shrugged her iron shoulders. "I tell him it serves him right," she said, cuttingly. "A sensible person keeps his money under his mattress and not in a tin machine by a window which anyone can get at. I wonder we've not been murdered in our beds before."

"Ah, Maman!" expostulated the Mayor of Perpignan.

But she turned her back on him and worried the policemen. They, having probed, and measured, and consulted with the detective, came to an exact conclusion. The thief had climbed over the back wall—there were his footsteps. He had entered by the kitchen door—there were the marks of infraction. He had broken open the safe—there was the helpless condition of the lock. No one in Perpignan, but Jose Puegas, with his bad, socialistic, Barcelona blood, could have done it. These brilliant results were arrived at after much clamour and argument and imposing proces verbal. Aristide felt strangely depressed. He had narrated his story of the pig-headed masquer to unresponsive ears. Here was a melodramatic scene in which he not only was not playing a leading part, but did not even carry a banner. To be less than a super in life's pageant was abhorrent to the nature of Aristide Pujol.

Moodily he wandered away from the little crowd. He hated the police and their airs of gods for whom exists no mystery. He did not believe in the kitchen-door theory. Why should not the thief have simply entered by the window of the study, which like the kitchen, was on the ground floor? He went round the house and examined the window by himself. No; there were no traces of burglary. The fastenings of the outside shutters and the high window were intact. The police were right.

Suddenly his quick eye lit on something in the gravel path and his heart gave a great leap. It was a little round pink disc of confetti.

Aristide picked it up and began to dance and shake his fist at the invisible police.

"Aha!" he cried, "now we shall see who is right and who is wrong!"

He began to search and soon found another bit of confetti. A little further along he discovered a third and a fourth. By using his walking stick he discovered that they formed a trail to a point in the wall. He examined the wall. There, if his eyes did not deceive him, were evidences of mortar dislodged by nefarious toes. And there, mirabile visu! at the very bottom of the wall lay a little woollen pompon or tassel, just the kind of pompon that gives a finish to a pierrot's shoes. Evidently the scoundrel had scraped it off against the bricks while clambering over.

The pig-headed masquer stood confessed.

A less imaginative man than Aristide would have immediately acquainted the police with his discovery. But Aristide had been insulted. A dull, mechanical bureaucrat who tried to discover crime with a tape-measure had dared to talk contemptuously of his intelligence! On his wooden head should be poured the vials of his contempt.

"Tron de l'air!" cried Aristide—a Provencal oath which he only used on sublime occasions—"It is I who will discover the thief and make the whole lot of you the laughing-stock of Perpignan."

So did my versatile friend, joyously confident in his powers, start on his glorious career as a private detective.

"Madame Coquereau," said he, that evening, while she was dealing a hand at piquet, "what would you say if I solved this mystery and brought the scoundrel to justice?"

"To say that you would have more sense than the police, would be a poor compliment," said the old lady.

Stephanie raised cloistral eyes from her embroidery frame. She sat in a distant corner of the formal room discreetly lit by a shaded lamp.

"You have a clue, Monsieur?" she asked with adorable timidity.

Aristide tapped his forehead with his forefinger. "All is there, Mademoiselle."

They exchanged a glance—the first they had exchanged—while Madame Coquereau was frowning at her cards; and Aristide interpreted the glance as the promise of supreme reward for great deeds accomplished.

The mayor returned early from the cafe, a dejected man. The loss of his hundred and twenty pounds weighed heavily on his mind. He kissed his mother sorrowfully on the cheek, his niece on the brow, held out a drooping hand to Aristide, and, subsiding into a stiff imitation Louis XVI chair, rested his elbows on its unconsoling arms and hid his face in his hands.

"My poor uncle! You suffer so much?" breathed Stephanie, in divine compassion.

"Little Saint!" murmured Aristide devoutly, as he declared four aces and three queens.

The Mayor moved his head sympathetically. He was suffering from the sharpest pain in his pocket he had felt for many a day. Madame Coquereau's attention wandered from the cards.

"Dis donc, Fernand," she said sharply. "Why are you not wearing your ring?"

The Mayor looked up.

"Maman," said he, "it is stolen."

"Your beautiful ring?" cried Aristide.

The Mayor's ring, which he usually wore, was a remarkable personal adornment. It consisted in a couple of snakes in old gold clenching an enormous topaz between their heads. Only a Mayor could have worn it with decency.

"You did not tell me, Fernand," rasped the old lady. "You did not mention it to me as being one of the stolen objects."

The Mayor rose wearily. "It was to avoid giving you pain, maman. I know what a value you set upon the ring of my good Aunt Philomene."

"And now it is lost," said Madame Coquereau, throwing down her cards. "A ring that belonged to a saint. Yes, Monsieur Pujol, a saint, though she was my sister. A ring that had been blessed by His Holiness the Pope——"

"But, maman," expostulated the Mayor, "that was an imagination of Aunt Philomene. Just because she went to Rome and had an audience like anyone else——"

"Silence, impious atheist that you are!" cried the old lady. "I tell you it was blessed by His Holiness—and when I tell you a thing it is true. That is the son of to-day. He will call his mother a liar as soon as look at her. It was a ring beyond price. A ring such as there are few in the world. And instead of taking care of this precious heirloom, he goes and locks it away in a safe. Ah! you fill me with shame. Monsieur Pujol, I am sorry I can play no more, I must retire. Stephanie, will you accompany me?"

And gathering up Stephanie like a bunch of snowdrops, the yellow, galvanized iron old lady swept out of the room.

The Mayor looked at Aristide and moved his arms dejectedly.

"Such are women," said he.

"My own mother nearly broke her heart because I would not become a priest," said Aristide.

"I wish I were a Turk," said the Mayor.

"I, too," said Aristide.

He took pouch and papers and rolled a cigarette.

"If there is a man living who can say he has not felt like that at least once in his life he ought to be exhibited at a fair."

"How well you understand me, my good Pujol," said Monsieur Coquereau.

The next few days passed busily for Aristide. He devoted every spare hour to his new task. He scrutinized every inch of ground between the study window and the wall; he drew radiating lines from the point of the wall whence the miscreant had started homeward and succeeded in finding more confetti. He cross-examined every purveyor of pierrot shoes and pig's heads in Perpignan. His researches soon came to the ears of the police, still tracing the mysterious Jose Puegas. A certain good-humoured brigadier whose Catalan French Aristide found difficult to understand, but with whom he had formed a derisory kind of friendship, urged him to desist from the hopeless task.

"Jamais de la vie!" he cried—"The honour of Aristide Pujol is at stake."

The thing became an obsession. Not only his honour but his future was at stake. If he discovered the thief, he would be the most talked of person in Perpignan. He would know how to improve his position. He would rise to dizzy heights. Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir would acclaim him as its saviour. The Government would decorate him. And finally, both the Mayor and Madame Coquereau would place the blushing and adorable Mademoiselle Stephanie in his arms and her two hundred and fifty thousand francs dowry in his pocket. Never before had so dazzling a prize shimmered before him in the near distance.

On the last Saturday night of the Carnival, there was a special corso for the populace in the Avenue des Plantanes, the long splendid Avenue of plane trees just outside the Porte Notre Dame, which is the special glory of Perpignan. The masquers danced to three or four bands. They threw confetti and serpentins. They rode hobby-horses and beat each other with bladders. They joined in bands of youths and maidens and whirled down the Avenue in Bacchic madness. It was a corso blanc, and everyone wore white—chiefly modifications of Pierrot costume—and everyone was masked. Chinese lanterns hung from the trees and in festoons around the bandstands and darted about in the hands of the revellers. Above, great standard electric lamps shed their white glare upon the eddying throng casting a myriad of grotesque shadows. Shouts and laughter and music filled the air.

Aristide in a hideous red mask and with a bag of confetti under his arm, plunged with enthusiasm into the revelry. To enjoy yourself you only had to throw your arm round a girl's waist and swing her off wildly to the beat of the music. If you wanted to let her go you did so; if not, you talked in the squeaky voice that is the recognized etiquette of the carnival. On the other hand any girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, more than usually piquant.

"This hurly-burly," said he, drawing her into a quiet eddy of the stream, "is no place for the communion of two twin souls."

"Beau masque," said she, "I perceive that you are a man of much sensibility."

"Shall we find a spot where we can mingle the overflow of our exquisite natures?"

"As you like."

"Allons! Hop!" cried he, and seizing her round the waist danced through the masquers to the very far end of the Avenue.

"There is a sequestered spot round here," he said.

They turned. The sequestered spot, a seat beneath a plane tree, with a lonesome arc-lamp shining full upon it, was occupied.

"It's a pity!" said the fair unknown.

But Aristide said nothing. He stared. On the seat reposed an amorous couple. The lady wore a white domino and a black mask. The cavalier, whose arm was around the lady's waist, wore a pig's head, and a clown or Pierrot's dress.

Aristide's eyes fell upon the shoes. On one of them the pompon was missing.

The lady's left hand tenderly patted the cardboard snout of her lover. The fierce light of the arc lamp caught the hand and revealed, on the fourth finger, a topaz ring, the topaz held in its place by two snakes' heads.

Aristide stared for two seconds; it seemed to him two centuries. Then he turned simply, caught his partner again, and with a "Allons, Hop!" raced back to the middle of the throng. There, in the crush, he unceremoniously lost her, and sped like a maniac to the entrance gates. His friend the brigadier happened to be on duty. He unmasked himself, dragged the police agent aside, and breathless, half-hysterical, acquainted him with the astounding discovery.

"I was right, mon vieux! There at the end of the Avenue you will find them. The pig-headed prowler I saw, with my pompon missing from his shoe, and his bonne amie wearing the stolen ring. Ah! you police people with your tape-measures and your Jose Puegas! It is I, Aristide Pujol, who have to come to Perpignan to teach you your business!"

"What do you want me to do?" asked the brigadier stolidly.

"Do?" cried Aristide. "Do you think I want you to kiss them and cover them with roses? What do you generally do with thieves in Perpignan?"

"Arrest them," said the brigadier.

"Eh bien!" said Aristide. Then he paused—possibly the drama of the situation striking him. "No, wait. Go and find them. Don't take your eyes off them. I will run and fetch Monsieur le Maire and he will identify his property—et puis nous aurons la scene a faire."

The stout brigadier grunted an assent and rolled monumentally down the Avenue. Aristide, his pulses throbbing, his heart exulting, ran to the Mayor's house. He was rather a panting triumph than a man. He had beaten the police of Perpignan. He had discovered the thief. He was the hero of the town. Soon would the wedding bells be playing.... He envied the marble of the future statue. He would like to be on the pedestal himself.

He dashed past the maid-servant who opened the door and burst into the prim salon. Madame Coquereau was alone, just preparing to retire for the night. Mademoiselle Stephanie had already gone to bed.

"Mon Dieu, what is all this?" she cried.

"Madame," shouted he, "glorious news. I have found the thief!"

He told his tale. Where was Monsieur le Maire?

"He has not yet come back from the cafe."

"I'll go and find him," said Aristide.

"And waste time? Bah!" said the iron-faced old lady, catching up a black silk shawl. "I will come with you and identify the ring of my sainted sister Philomene. Who should know it better than I?"

"As you like, Madame," said Aristide.

Two minutes found them on their journey. Madame Coquereau, in spite of her sixty-five years trudged along with springing step.

"They don't make metal like me, nowadays," she said scornfully.

When they arrived at the gate of the Avenue, the police on guard saluted. The mother of Monsieur le Maire was a power in Perpignan.

"Monsieur," said Aristide, in lordly fashion, to a policeman, "will you have the goodness to make a passage through the crowd for Madame Coquereau, and then help the Brigadier Pesac to arrest the burglar who broke into the house of Monsieur le Maire?"

The man obeyed, went ahead clearing the path with the unceremoniousness of the law, and Aristide giving his arm to Madame Coquereau followed gloriously. As the impressive progress continued the revellers ceased their revels and followed in the wake of Aristide. At the end of the Avenue Brigadier Pesac was on guard. He approached.

"They are still there," he said.

"Good," said Aristide.

The two police-officers, Aristide and Madame Coquereau turned the corner. At the sight of the police the guilty couple started to their feet. Madame Coquereau pounced like a hawk on the masked lady's hand.

"I identify it," she cried. "Brigadier, give these people in charge for theft."

The white masked crowd surged around the group, in the midst of which stood Aristide transfigured. It was his supreme moment. He flourished in one hand his red mask and in the other a pompon which he had extracted from his pocket.

"This I found," said he, "beneath the wall of Monsieur le Maire's garden. Behold the shoe of the accused."

The crowd murmured their applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig's head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A rumbling voice beneath it said:

"We will go quietly."

"Attention s'il vous plait," said the policemen, and each holding a prisoner by the arm they made a way through the crowd. Madame Coquereau and Aristide followed close behind.

"What did I tell you?" cried Aristide to the brigadier.

"It's Puegas, all the same," said the brigadier, over his shoulder.

"I bet you it's not," said Aristide, and striding swiftly to the back of the male prisoner whipped off the pig's head, and revealed to the petrified throng the familiar features of the Mayor of Perpignan.

Aristide regarded him for two or three seconds open-mouthed, and then fell back into the arms of the Brigadier Pesac screaming with convulsive laughter. The crowd caught the infection of merriment. Shrieks filled the air. The vast mass of masqueraders held their sides, swayed helplessly, rolled in heaps, men and women, tearing each other's garments as they fell.

Aristide, deposited on the ground by the Brigadier Pesac laughed and laughed. When he recovered some consciousness of surroundings, he found the Mayor bending over him and using language that would have made Tophet put its fingers in its ears. He rose. Madame Coquereau shook her thin fists in his face.

"Imbecile! Triple fool!" she cried.

Aristide turned tail and fled. There was nothing else to do.

And that was the end of his career at Perpignan. Vanished were the dreams of civic eminence; melted into thin air the statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot; faded, too, the vision of the modest Stephanie crowned with orange-blossom; gone forever the two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Never since Alnaschar kicked over his basket of crockery was there such a hideous welter of shattered hopes.

If the Mayor had been allowed to go disguised to the Police Station, he could have disclosed his identity and that of the lady in private to awe-stricken functionaries. He might have forgiven Aristide. But Aristide had exposed him to the derision of the whole of Roussillon and the never ending wrath of Madame Coquereau. Ruefully Aristide asked himself the question: why had the Mayor not taken him into the confidence of his masquerading escapade? Why had he not told him of the pretty widow, whom, unknown to his mother, he was courting? Why had he permitted her to wear the ring which he had given her so as to spite his sainted Aunt Philomene? And why had he gone on wearing the pig's head after Aristide had told him of his suspicions? Ruefully Aristide found no answers save in the general chuckle-headedness of mankind.

"If it hadn't been such a good farce I should have wept like a cow," said Aristide, after relating this story. "But every time I wanted to cry, I laughed. Nom de Dieu! You should have seen his face! And the face of Madame Coquereau! She opened her mouth wide showing ten yellow teeth and squealed like a rabbit! Oh, it was a good farce! He was very cross with me," he added after a smiling pause, "and when I got back to Paris I tried to pacify him."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I sent him my photograph," said Aristide.



VI

THE ADVENTURE OF FLEURETTE

One day, when Aristide was discoursing on the inexhaustible subject of woman, I pulled him up.

"My good friend," said I, "you seem to have fallen in love with every woman you have ever met. But for how many of them have you really cared?"

"Mon Dieu! For all of them!" he cried, springing from his chair and making a wind-mill of himself.

"Come, come," said I; "all that amorousness is just Gallic exuberance. Have you ever been really in love in your life?"

"How should I know?" said he. But he lit a cigarette, turned away, and looked out of window.

There was a short silence. He shrugged his shoulders, apparently in response to his own thoughts. Then he turned again suddenly, threw his cigarette into the fire, and thrust his hands into his pockets. He sighed.

"Perhaps there was Fleurette," said he, not looking at me. "Est-ce qu'on sait jamais? That wasn't her real name—it was Marie-Josephine; but people called her Fleurette. She looked like a flower, you know."

I nodded in order to signify my elementary acquaintance with the French tongue.

"The most delicate little flower you can conceive," he continued. "Tiens, she was a slender lily—so white, and her hair the flash of gold on it—and she had eyes—des yeux de pervenche, as we say in French. What is pervenche in English—that little pale-blue flower?"

"Periwinkle," said I.

"Periwinkle eyes! My God, what a language! Ah, no! She had des yeux de pervenche.... She was diaphane, diaphanous ... impalpable as cigarette-smoke ... a little nose like nothing at all, with nostrils like infinitesimal sea-shells. Anyone could have made a mouthful of her.... Ah! Cre nom d'un chien! Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank.... I've never told you about Fleurette. It was this way."

And the story he narrated I will do my best to set down.

* * * * *

The good M. Bocardon, of the Hotel de la Curatterie at Nimes, whose grateful devotion to Aristide has already been recorded, had a brother in Paris who managed the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse (strange conjuncture), a flourishing third-rate hostelry in the neighbourhood of the Halles Centrales. Thither flocked sturdy Britons in knickerbockers, stockings, and cloth caps, Teutons with tin botanizing boxes (for lunch transportation), and American school-marms realizing at last the dream of their modest and laborious lives. Accommodation was cheap, manners were easy, and knowledge of the gay city less than rudimentary.

To M. Bocardon of Paris Aristide, one August morning, brought glowing letters of introduction from M. and Mme. Bocardon of Nimes. M. Bocardon of Paris welcomed Aristide as a Provencal and a brother. He brought out from a cupboard in his private bureau an hospitable bottle of old Armagnac, and discoursed with Aristide on the seductions of the South. It was there that he longed to retire—to a dainty little hotel of his own with a smart clientele. The clientele of the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse was not to his taste. He spoke slightingly of his guests.

"There are people who know how to travel," said he, "and people who don't. These lost muttons here don't, and they make hotel-keeping a nightmare instead of a joy. A hundred times a day have I to tell them the way to Notre Dame. Pouah!" said he, gulping down his disgust and the rest of his Armagnac, "it is back-breaking."

"Tu sais, mon vieux," cried Aristide—he had the most lightning way of establishing an intimacy—"I have an idea. These lost sheep need a shepherd."

"Eh bien?" said M. Bocardon.

"Eh bien," said Aristide. "Why should not I be the shepherd, the official shepherd attached to the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse?"

"Explain yourself," said M. Bocardon.

Aristide, letting loose his swift imagination, explained copiously, and hypnotized M. Bocardon with his glittering eye, until he had assured to himself a means of livelihood. From that moment he became the familiar genius of the hotel. Scorning the title of "guide," lest he should be associated in the minds of the guests with the squalid scoundrels who infest the Boulevard, he constituted himself "Directeur de l'Agence Pujol." An obfuscated Bocardon formed the rest of the agency and pocketed a percentage of Aristide's earnings, and Aristide, addressed as "Director" by the Anglo-Saxons, "M. le Directeur" by the Latins, and "Herr Direktor" by the Teutons, walked about like a peacock in a barn-yard.



At that period, and until he had learned up Baedeker by heart, a process which nearly gave him brain-fever, and still, he declares, brings terror into his slumbers, he knew little more of the history, topography, and art-treasures of Paris than the flock he shepherded. He must have dealt out paralyzing information. The Britons and the Germans seemed not to heed; but now and then the American school-marms unmasked the charlatan. On such occasions his unfaltering impudence reached heights truly sublime. The sharp-witted ladies looked in his eyes, forgot their wrongs, and, if he had told them that the Eiffel Tower had been erected by the Pilgrim Fathers, would have accepted the statement meekly.

"My friend," said Aristide, with Provencal flourish and braggadocio, "I never met a woman that would not sooner be misled by me than be taught by the whole Faculty of the Sorbonne."

He had been practising this honourable profession for about a month, lodging with the good Mme. Bidoux at 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honore, when, one morning, in the vestibule of the hotel, he ran into his old friend Batterby, whom he had known during the days of his professorship of French at the Academy for Young Ladies in Manchester. The pair had been fellow-lodgers in the same house in the Rusholme Road; but, whereas Aristide lived in one sunless bed-sitting-room looking on a forest of chimney-pots, Batterby, man of luxury and ease, had a suite of apartments on the first floor and kept an inexhaustible supply of whisky, cigars, and such-like etceteras of the opulent, and the very ugliest prize bull-pup you can imagine. Batterby, in gaudy raiment, went to an office in Manchester; in gaudier raiment he often attended race meetings. He had rings and scarf-pins and rattled gold in his trousers pockets. He might have been an insufferable young man for a poverty-stricken teacher of French to have as a fellow-lodger; but he was not. Like all those born to high estate, he made no vulgar parade of his wealth, and to Aristide he showed the most affable hospitality. A friendship had arisen between them, which the years had idealized rather than impaired. So when they met that morning in the vestibule of the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse their greetings were fervent and prolonged.

In person Batterby tended towards burliness. He had a red, jolly face, divided unequally by a great black moustache, and his manner was hearty. He slapped Aristide on the back many times and shook him by the shoulders.

"We must have a drink on this straight away, old man," said he.

"You're so strange, you English," said Aristide. "The moment you have an emotion you must celebrate it by a drink. 'My dear fellow, I've just come into a fortune; let us have a drink.' Or, 'My friend, my poor old father has just been run over by an omnibus; let us have a drink.' My good Reginald, look at the clock. It is only nine in the morning."

"Rot!" said Reginald. "Drink is good at any time."

They went into the dark and deserted smoking-room, where Batterby ordered Scotch and soda and Aristide, an abstemious man, a plain vermouth.

"What's that muck?" asked Batterby, when the waiter brought the drinks. Aristide explained. "Whisky's good enough for me," laughed the other. Aristide laughed too, out of politeness and out of joy at meeting his old friend.

"With you playing at guide here," said Batterby, when he had learned Aristide's position in the hotel, "it seems I have come to the right shop. There are no flies on me, you know, but when a man comes to Paris for the first time he likes to be put up to the ropes."

"Your first visit to Paris?" cried Aristide. "Mon vieux, what wonders are going to ravish your eyes! What a time you are going to have!"

Batterby bit off the end of a great black cigar.

"If the missus will let me," said he.

"Missus? Your wife? You are married, my dear Reginald?" Aristide leaped, in his unexpected fashion, from his chair and almost embraced him. "Ah, but you are happy, you are lucky. It was always like that. You open your mouth and the larks fall ready roasted into it! My congratulations. And she is here, in this hotel, your wife? Tell me about her."

Batterby lit his cigar. "She's nothing to write home about," he said, modestly. "She's French."

"French? No—you don't say so!" exclaimed Aristide, in ecstasy.

"Well, she was brought up in France from her childhood, but her parents were Finns. Funny place for people to come from—Finland—isn't it? You could never expect it—might just as well think of 'em coming from Lapland. She's an orphan. I met her in London."

"But that's romantic! And she is young, pretty?"

"Oh, yes; in a way," said the proprietary Briton.

"And her name?"

"Oh, she has a fool name—Fleurette. I wanted to call her Flossie, but she didn't like it."

"I should think not," said Aristide. "Fleurette is an adorable name."

"I suppose it's right enough," said Batterby. "But if I want to call her good old Flossie, why should she object? You married, old man? No? Well, wait till you are. You think women are angels all wrapped up in feathers and wings beneath their toggery, don't you? Well, they're just blooming porcupines, all bristling with objections."

"Mais, allons, donc!" cried Aristide. "You love her, your beautiful Finnish orphan brought up in France and romantically met in London, with the adorable name?"

"Oh, that's all right," said the easy Batterby, lifting his half-emptied glass. "Here's luck!"

"Ah—no!" said Aristide, leaning forward and clinking his wineglass against the other's tumbler. "Here is to madame."

When they returned to the vestibule they found Mrs. Batterby patiently awaiting her lord. She rose from her seat at the approach of the two men, a fragile flower of a girl, about three-and-twenty, pale as a lily, with exquisite though rather large features, and with eyes of the blue of the pervenche (in deference to Aristide I use the French name), which seemed to smile trustfully through perpetual tears. She was dressed in pale, shadowy blue—graceful, impalpable, like the smoke, said Aristide, curling upwards from a cigarette.

"Reggie has spoken of you many times, monsieur," said Fleurette, after the introduction had been effected.

Aristide was touched. "Fancy him remembering me! Ce bon vieux Reginald. Madame," said he, "your husband is the best fellow in the world."

"Feed him with sugar and he won't bite," said Batterby; whereat they all laughed, as if it had been a very good joke.

"Well, what about this Paris of yours?" he asked, after a while. "The missus knows as little of it as I do."

"Really?" asked Aristide.

"I lived all my life in Brest before I went to England," she said, modestly.

"She wants to see all the sights, the Louvre, the Morgue, the Cathedral of What's-its-name that you've got here. I've got to go round, too. Pleases her and don't hurt me. You must tote us about. We'll have a cab, old girl, as you can't do much walking, and good old Pujol will come with us."

"But that is ideal!" cried Aristide, flying to the door to order the cab; but before he could reach it he was stopped by three or four waiting tourists, who pointed, some to the clock, some to the wagonette standing outside, and asked the director when the personally-conducted party was to start. Aristide, who had totally forgotten the responsibilities attached to the directorship of the Agence Pujol and, but for this reminder, would have blissfully left his sheep to err and stray over Paris by themselves, returned crestfallen to his friends and explained the situation.

"But we'll join the party," said the cheery Batterby. "The more the merrier—good old bean-feast! Will there be room?"

"Plenty," replied Aristide, brightening. "But would it meet the wishes of madame?" Her pale face flushed ever so slightly and the soft eyes fluttered at him a half-astonished, half-grateful glance.

"With my husband and you, monsieur, I should love it," she said.

So Mr. and Mrs. Batterby joined the personally-conducted party, as they did the next morning, and the next, and several mornings after, and received esoteric information concerning the monuments of Paris that is hidden even from the erudite. The evenings, however, Aristide, being off duty, devoted to their especial entertainment. He took them to riotous and perspiring restaurants where they dined gorgeously for three francs fifty, wine included; to open-air cafes-concerts in the Champs Elysees, which Fleurette found infinitely diverting, but which bored Batterby, who knew not French, to stertorous slumber; to crowded brasseries on the Boulevard, where Batterby awakened, under a steady flow of whisky, to appreciative contemplation of Paris life. As in the old days of the Rusholme Road, Batterby flung his money about with unostentatious generosity. He was out for a beano, he declared, and hang the expense! Aristide, whose purse, scantily filled (truth to say) by the profits of the Agence Pujol, could contribute but modestly to this reckless expenditure, found himself forced to accept his friend's lavish hospitality. Once or twice, delicately, he suggested withdrawal from the evening's dissipation.

"But, my good M. Pujol," said Fleurette, with childish tragicality in her pervenche eyes, "without you we shall be lost. We shall not enjoy ourselves at all, at all."

So Aristide, out of love for his friend, and out of he knew not what for his friend's wife, continued to show them the sights of Paris. They went to the cabarets of Montmartre—the Ciel, where one is served by angels; the Enfer, where one is served by red devils in a Tartarean lighting; the Neant, where one has coffins for tables—than all of which vulgarity has imagined no more joy-killing dreariness, but which caused Fleurette to grip Aristide's hand tight in scared wonderment and Batterby to chuckle exceedingly. They went to the Bal Bullier and to various other balls undreamed of by the tourist, where Fleurette danced with Aristide, as light as an autumn leaf tossed by the wind, and Batterby absorbed a startling assortment of alcohols. In a word, Aristide procured for his friends prodigious diversion.

"How do you like this, old girl?" Batterby asked one night, at the Moulin de la Galette, a dizzying, not very decorous, and to the unsophisticated visitor a dangerous place of entertainment. "Better than Great Coram Street, isn't it?"

She smiled and laid her hand on his. She was a woman of few words but of many caressing actions.

"I ought to let you into a secret," said he. "This is our honeymoon."

"Who would have thought it?"



"A fortnight ago she was being killed in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. There were two of 'em—she and a girl called Carrie. I used to call 'em Fetch and Carrie. This one was Fetch. Well, she fetched me, didn't you, old girl? And now you're Mrs. Reginald Batterby, living at your ease, eh?"

"Madame would grace any sphere," said Aristide.

"I wish I had more education," said Fleurette, humbly. "M. Pujol and yourself are so clever that you must laugh at me."

"We do sometimes, but you mustn't mind us. Remember—at the what-you-call-it—the little shanty at Versailles——?"

"The Grand Trianon," replied Aristide.

"That's it. When you were showing us the rooms. 'What is the Empress Josephine doing now?'" He mimicked her accent. "Ha! ha! And the poor soul gone to glory a couple of hundred years ago."

The little mouth puckered at the corners and moisture gathered in the blue eyes.

"Mais, mon Dieu, it was natural, the mistake," cried Aristide, gallantly. "The Empress Eugenie, the wife of another Napoleon, is still living."

"Bien sur," said Fleurette. "How was I to know?"

"Never mind, old girl," said Batterby. "You're living all right, and out of that beastly boarding-house, and that's the chief thing. Another month of it would have killed her. She had a cough that shook her to bits. She's looking better already, isn't she, Pujol?"

After this Aristide learned much of her simple history, which she, at first, had been too shy to reveal. The child of Finnish sea-folk who had drifted to Brest and died there, she had been adopted by an old Breton sea-dog and his wife. On their death she had entered, as maid, the service of an English lady residing in the town, who afterwards had taken her to England. After a while reverses of fortune had compelled the lady to dismiss her, and she had taken the situation in the boarding-house, where she had ruined her health and met the opulent and conquering Batterby. She had not much chance, poor child, of acquiring a profound knowledge of the history of the First Empire; but her manners were refined and her ways gentle and her voice was soft; and Aristide, citizen of the world, for whom caste distinctions existed not, thought her the most exquisite flower grown in earth's garden. He told her so, much to her blushing satisfaction.

One night, about three weeks after the Batterbys' arrival in Paris, Batterby sent his wife to bed and invited Aristide to accompany him for half an hour to a neighbouring cafe. He looked grave and troubled.

"I've been upset by a telegram," said he, when drinks had been ordered. "I'm called away to New York on business. I must catch the boat from Cherbourg to-morrow evening. Now, I can't take Fleurette with me. Women and business don't mix. She has jolly well got to stay here. I sha'n't be away more than a month. I'll leave her plenty of money to go on with. But what's worrying me is—how is she going to stick it? So look here, old man, you're my pal, aren't you?"

He stretched out his hand. Aristide grasped it impulsively.

"Why, of course, mon vieux!"

"If I felt that I could leave her in your charge, all on the square, as a real straight pal—I should go away happy."

"She shall be my sister," cried Aristide, "and I shall give her all the devotion of a brother.... I swear it—tiens—what can I swear it on?" He flung out his arms and looked round the cafe as if in search of an object. "I swear it on the head of my mother. Have no fear. I, Aristide Pujol, have never betrayed the sacred obligations of friendship. I accept her as a consecrated trust."

"You only need to have said 'Right-o,' and I would have believed you," said Batterby. "I haven't told her yet. There'll be blubbering all night. Let us have another drink."

When Aristide arrived at the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse at nine o'clock the next morning he found that Batterby had left Paris by an early train. Fleurette he did not meet until he brought back the sight-seers to the fold in the evening. She had wept much during the day; but she smiled bravely on Aristide. A woman could not stand in the way of her husband's business.

"By the way, what is Reginald's business?" Aristide asked.

She did not know. Reginald never spoke to her of such things; perhaps she was too ignorant to understand.

"But he will make a lot of money by going to America," she said. Then she was silent for a few moments. "Mon Dieu!" she sighed, at last. "How long the day has been!"

It was the beginning of many long days for Fleurette. Reginald did not write from Cherbourg or cable from New York, as he had promised, and the return American mail brought no letter. The days passed drearily. Sometimes, for the sake of human society, she accompanied the tourist parties of the Agence Pujol; but the thrill had passed from the Morgue and the glory had departed from Versailles. Sometimes she wandered out by herself into the streets and public gardens; but, pretty, unprotected, and fragile, she attracted the attention of evil or careless men, which struck cold terror into her heart. Most often she sat alone and listless in the hotel, reading the feuilleton of the Petit Journal, and waiting for the post to bring her news.

"Mon Dieu, M. Pujol, what can have happened?"

"Nothing at all, chere petite madame"—question and answer came many times a day. "Only some foolish mischance which will soon be explained. The good Reginald has written and his letter has been lost in the post. He has been obliged to go on business to San Francisco or Buenos Ayres—et, que voulez-vous? one cannot have letters from those places in twenty-four hours."

"If only he had taken me with him!"

"But, dear Mme. Fleurette, he could not expose you to the hardships of travel. You, who are as fragile as a cobweb, how could you go to Patagonia or Senegal or Baltimore, those wild places where there are no comforts for women? You must be reasonable. I am sure you will get a letter soon—or else in a day or two he will come, with his good, honest face as if nothing had occurred—these English are like that—and call for whisky and soda. Be comforted, chere petite madame."

Aristide did his best to comfort her, threw her in the companionship of decent women staying at the hotel, and devoted his evenings to her entertainment. But the days passed, and Reginald Batterby, with the good, honest face, neither wrote nor ordered whisky and soda. Fleurette began to pine and fade.

One day she came to Aristide.

"M. Pujol, I have no more money left."

"Bigre!" said Pujol. "The good Bocardon will have to give you credit. I'll arrange it."

"But I already owe for three weeks," said Fleurette.

Aristide sought Bocardon. One week more was all the latter dared allow.

"But her husband will return and pay you. He is my old and intimate friend. I make myself hoarse in telling it to you, wooden-head that you are!"

But Bocardon, who had to account to higher powers, the proprietors of the hotel, was helpless. At the end of the week Fleurette was called upon to give up her room. She wept with despair; Aristide wept with fury; Bocardon wept out of sympathy. Already, said Bocardon, the proprietors would blame him for not using the legal right to detain madame's luggage.

"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! what is to become of me?" wailed Fleurette.

"You forget, madame," said Aristide, with one of his fine flourishes, "that you are the sacred trust of Aristide Pujol."

"But I can't accept your money," objected Fleurette.

"Tron de l'air!" he cried. "Did your husband put you in my charge or did he not? Am I your legal guardian, or am I not? If I am your legal guardian, what right have you to question the arrangements made by your husband? Answer me that."

Fleurette, too gentle and too miserable for intricate argument, sighed.

"But it is your money, all the same."

Aristide turned to Bocardon. "Try," said he, "to convince a woman! Do you want proofs? Wait there a minute while I get them from the safe of the Agence Pujol."

He disappeared into the bureau, where, secure from observation, he tore an oblong strip from a sheet of stiff paper, and, using an indelible pencil, wrote out something fantastic halfway between a cheque and a bill of exchange, forged as well as he could from memory the signature of Reginald Batterby—the imitation of handwriting was one of Aristide's many odd accomplishments—and made the document look legal by means of a receipt stamp, which he took from Bocardon's drawer. He returned to the vestibule with the strip folded and somewhat crumpled in his hand. "Voila," said he, handing it boldly to Fleurette. "Here is your husband's guarantee to me, your guardian, for four thousand francs."

Fleurette examined the forgery. The stamp impressed her. For the simple souls of France there is magic in papier timbre.

"It was my husband who wrote this?" she asked, curiously.

"Mais, oui," said Aristide, with an offended air of challenge.

Fleurette's eyes filled again with tears.

"I only inquired," she said, "because this is the first time I have seen his handwriting."

"Ma pauvre petite," said Aristide.

"I will do whatever you tell me, M. Pujol," said Fleurette, humbly.

"Good! That is talking like une bonne petite dame raisonnable. Now, I know a woman made up of holy bread whom St. Paul and St. Peter are fighting to have next them when she goes to Paradise. Her name is Mme. Bidoux, and she sells cabbages and asparagus and charcoal at No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honore. She will arrange our little affair. Bocardon, will you have madame's trunks sent to that address?"

He gave his arm to Fleurette, and walked out of the hotel, with serene confidence in the powers of the sainted Mme. Bidoux. Fleurette accompanied him unquestioningly. Of course she might have said: "If you hold negotiable security from my husband to the amount of four thousand francs, why should I exchange the comforts of the hotel for the doubtful accommodation of the sainted Mme. Bidoux who sells cabbages?" But I repeat that Fleurette was a simple soul who took for granted the wisdom of so flamboyant and virile a creature as Aristide Pujol.

Away up at the top of No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honore, was a little furnished room to let, and there Aristide installed his sacred charge. Mme. Bidoux, who, as she herself maintained, would have cut herself into four pieces for Aristide—did he not save her dog's life? Did he not marry her daughter to the brigadier of gendarmes (sale voyou!), who would otherwise have left her lamenting? Was he not the most wonderful of God's creatures?—Mme. Bidoux, although not quite appreciating Aristide's quixotic delicacy, took the forlorn and fragile wisp of misery to her capacious bosom. She made her free of the cabbages and charcoal. She provided her, at a risible charge, with succulent meals. She told her tales of her father and mother, of her neighbours, of the domestic differences between the concierge and his wife (soothing idyll for an Ariadne!), of the dirty thief of a brigadier of gendarmes, of her bodily ailments—her body was so large that they were many; of the picturesque death, through apoplexy, of the late M. Bidoux; the brave woman, in short, gave her of her heart's best. As far as human hearts could provide a bed for Fleurette, that bed was of roses. As a matter of brutal fact, it was narrow and nubbly, and the little uncarpeted room was ten feet by seven; but to provide it Aristide went to his own bed hungry. And if the bed of a man's hunger is not to be accounted as one of roses, there ought to be a vote for the reduction of the Recording Angel's salary.

It must not be imagined that Fleurette thought the bed hard. Her bed of life from childhood had been nubbly. She never dreamed of complaining of her little room under the stars, and she sat among the cabbages like a tired lily, quite contented with her material lot. But she drooped and drooped, and the cough returned and shook her; and Aristide, realizing the sacredness of his charge, became a prey to anxious terrors.

"Mere Bidoux," said he, "she must have lots of good, nourishing, tender, underdone beef, good fillets, and entrecotes saignantes."

Mme. Bidoux sighed. She had a heart, but she also had a pocket which, like Aristide's, was not over-filled. "That costs dear, my poor friend," she said.

"What does it matter what it costs? It is I who provide," said Aristide, grandly.

And Aristide gave up tobacco and coffee and the mild refreshment at cafes essential to the existence of every Frenchman, and degraded his soul by taking half-franc tips from tourists—a source of income which, as Director, M. le Directeur, Herr Direktor of the Agence Pujol, he had hitherto scorned haughtily—in order to provide Fleurette with underdone beefsteaks.

All his leisure he devoted to her. She represented something that hitherto had not come into his life—something delicate, tender, ethereal, something of woman that was exquisitely adorable, apart from the flesh. Once, as he was sitting in the little shop, she touched his temple lightly with her fingers.

"Ah, you are good to me, Aristide."

He felt a thrill such as no woman's touch had ever caused to pass through him—far, far sweeter, cleaner, purer. If the bon Dieu could have given her to him then and there to be his wife, what bond could have been holier? But he had bound himself by a sacred obligation. His friend on his return should find him loyal.

"Who could help being good to you, little Fleurette?" said he. "Even an Apache would not tread on a lily of the valley!"

"But you put me in water and tend me so carefully."

"So that you can be fresh whenever the dear Reginald comes back."

She sighed. "Tell me what I can do for you, my good Aristide."

"Keep well and happy and be a valiant little woman," said he.

Fleurette tried hard to be valiant; but the effort exhausted her strength. As the days went on, even Aristide's inexhaustible conversation failed to distract her from brooding. She lost the trick of laughter. In the evenings, when he was most with her, she would sit, either in the shop or in the little room at the back, her blue childish eyes fixed on him wistfully. At first he tried to lure her into the gay street; but walking tired her. He encouraged her to sit outside on the pavement of the Rue Saint-Honore and join with Mme. Bidoux in the gossip of neighbours; but she listened to them with uncomprehending ears. In despair Aristide, to coax a smile from her lips, practised his many queer accomplishments. He conjured with cards; he juggled with oranges; he had a mountebank's trick of putting one leg round his neck; he imitated the voices of cats and pigs and ducks, till Mme. Bidoux held her sides with mirth. He spent time and thought in elaborating what he called bonnes farces, such as dressing himself up in Mme. Bidoux's raiment and personifying a crabbed customer.

Fleurette smiled but listlessly at all these comicalities.

One day she was taken ill. A doctor, summoned, said many learned words which Aristide and Mme. Bidoux tried hard to understand.

"But, after all, what is the matter with her?"



"She has no strength to struggle. She wants happiness."

"Can you tell me the druggist's where that can be procured?" asked Aristide.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "I tell you the truth. It is one of those pulmonary cases. Happy, she will live; unhappy, she will die."

"My poor Mme. Bidoux, what is to be done?" asked Aristide, after the doctor had gone off with his modest fee. "How are we to make her happy?"

"If only she could have news of her husband!" replied Mme. Bidoux.

Aristide's anxieties grew heavier. It was November, when knickerbockered and culture-seeking tourists no longer fill the cheap hotels of Paris. The profits of the Agence Pujol dwindled. Aristide lived on bread and cheese, and foresaw the time when cheese would be a sinful luxury. Meanwhile Fleurette had her nourishing food, and grew more like the ghost of a lily every day. But her eyes followed Aristide, wherever he went in her presence, as if he were the god of her salvation.

One day Aristide, with an unexpected franc or two in his pocket, stopped in front of a bureau de tabac. A brown packet of caporal and a book of cigarette-papers—a cigarette rolled—how good it would be! He hesitated, and his glance fell on a collection of foreign stamps exposed in the window. Among them were twelve Honduras stamps all postmarked. He stared at them, fascinated.

"Mon brave Aristide!" he cried. "If the bon Dieu does not send you these vibrating inspirations, it is because you yourself have already conceived them!"

He entered the shop and emerged, not with caporal and cigarette-papers, but with the twelve Honduras stamps.

That night he sat up in his little bedroom at No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honore, until his candle failed, inditing a letter in English to Fleurette. At the head of his paper he wrote "Hotel Rosario, Honduras." And at the end of the letter he signed the name of Reginald Batterby. Where Honduras was, he had but a vague idea. For Fleurette, at any rate, it would be somewhere at the other end of the world, and she would not question any want of accuracy in local detail. Just before the light went out he read the letter through with great pride. Batterby alluded to the many letters he had posted from remote parts of the globe, gave glowing forecasts of the fortune that Honduras had in store for him, reminded her that he had placed sufficient funds for her maintenance in the hands of Aristide Pujol, and assured her that the time was not far off when she would be summoned to join her devoted husband.

"Mme. Bidoux was right," said he, before going to sleep. "This is the only way to make her happy."

The next day Fleurette received the letter. The envelope bore the postmarked Honduras stamp. It had been rubbed on the dusty pavement to take off the newness. It was in her husband's handwriting. There was no mistake about it—it was a letter from Honduras.

"Are you happier now, little doubting female St. Thomas that you are?" cried Aristide when she had told him the news.

She smiled at him out of grateful eyes, and touched his hand.

"Much happier, mon bon ami," she said, gently.

Later in the day she handed him a letter addressed to Batterby. It had no stamp.

"Will you post this for me, Aristide?"

Aristide put the letter in his pocket and turned sharply away, lest she should see a sudden rush of tears. He had not counted on this innocent trustfulness. He went to his room. The poor little letter! He had not the heart to destroy it. No; he would keep it till Batterby came; it was not his to destroy. So he threw it into a drawer.

Having once begun the deception, however, he thought it necessary to continue. Every week, therefore, he invented a letter from Batterby. To interest her he drew upon his Provencal imagination. He described combats with crocodiles, lion-hunts, feasts with terrific savages from the interior, who brought their lady wives chastely clad in petticoats made out of human teeth; he drew pictures of the town, a kind of palm-shaded Paris by the sea, where one ate ortolans and oysters as big as soup-plates, and where Chinamen with pigtails rode about the streets on camels. It was not a correct description of Honduras, but, all the same, an exotic atmosphere stimulating and captivating rose from the pages. With this it was necessary to combine expressions of affection. At first it was difficult. Essential delicacy restrained him. He had also to keep in mind Batterby's vernacular. To address Fleurette, impalpable creation of fairyland, as "old girl" was particularly distasteful. By degrees, however, the artist prevailed. And then at last the man himself took to forgetting the imaginary writer and poured out words of love, warm, true, and passionate.

And every week Fleurette would smile and tell him the wondrous news, and would put into his hands an unstamped letter to post, which he, with a wrench of the heart, would add to the collection in the drawer.

Once she said, diffidently, with an unwonted blush and her pale blue eyes swimming: "I write English so badly. Won't you read the letter and correct my mistakes?"

But Aristide laughed and licked the flap of the envelope and closed it. "What has love to do with spelling and grammar? The good Reginald would prefer your bad English to all the turned phrases of the Academie Francaise."

"It is as you like, Aristide," said Fleurette, with wistful eyes.

Yet, in spite of the weekly letters, Fleurette continued to droop. The winter came, and Fleurette was no longer able to stay among the cabbages of Mme. Bidoux. She lay on her bed in the little room, ten feet by seven, away, away at the top of the house in the Rue Saint Honore. The doctor, informed of her comparative happiness, again shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing more to be done.

"She is dying, monsieur, for want of strength to live."

Then Aristide went about with a great heartache. Fleurette would die; she would never see the man she loved again. What would he say when he returned and learned the tragic story? He would not even know that Aristide, loving her, had been loyal to him. When the Director of the Agence Pujol personally conducted the clients of the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse to the Grand Trianon and pointed out the bed of the Empress Josephine he nearly broke down.

"What is the Empress doing now?"

What was Fleurette doing now? Going to join the Empress in the world of shadows.

The tourists talked after the manner of their kind.

"She must have found the bed very hard, poor dear."

"Give me an iron bedstead and a good old spring mattress."

"Ah, but, my dear sir, you forget. The Empress's bed was slung on the back of tame panthers which Napoleon brought from Egypt."

It was hard to jest convincingly to the knickerbockered with death in one's soul.

"Most beloved little Flower," ran the last letter that Fleurette received, "I have just had a cable from Aristide saying that you are very ill. I will come to you as soon as I can. Ces petits yeux de pervenche—I am learning your language here, you see—haunt me day and night ..." etcetera, etcetera.

Aristide went up to her room with a great bunch of chrysanthemums. The letter peeped from under the pillow. Fleurette was very weak. Mme. Bidoux, who, during Fleurette's illness, had allowed her green grocery business to be personally conducted to the deuce by a youth of sixteen very much in love with the lady who sold sausages and other charcuterie next door, had spread out the fortune-telling cards on the bed and was prophesying mendaciously. Fleurette took the flowers and clasped them to her bosom.

"No letter for ce cher Reginald?"

She shook her head. "I can write no more," she whispered.

She closed her eyes. Presently she said, in a low voice:—

"Aristide—if you kiss me, I think I can go to sleep."

He bent down to kiss her forehead. A fragile arm twined itself about his neck and he kissed her on the lips.

"She is sleeping," said Mme. Bidoux, after a while.

Aristide tiptoed out of the room.

And so died Fleurette. Aristide borrowed money from the kind-hearted Bocardon for a beautiful funeral, and Mme. Bidoux and Bocardon and a few neighbours and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the Rue Saint Honore he told Mme. Bidoux about the letters. She wept and clasped him, weeping too, in her kind, fat old arms.

The next evening Aristide, coming back from his day's work at the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Mme. Bidoux, hands on broad hips.

"Tiens, mon petit," she said, without preliminary greeting. "You are an angel. I knew it. But that a man's an angel is no reason for his being an imbecile. Read this."

She plucked a paper from her apron pocket and thrust it into his hand. He read it, and blinked in amazement.

"Where did you get this, Mere Bidoux?"

"Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him."

"Mere Bidoux!" cried Aristide. "Those letters were sacred!"

"Bah!" said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. "There is nothing sacred to a sapper or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters, et voila, et voila, et voila!" And she emptied her pockets of all the letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written.

And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself.

They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand. But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide. Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had betrayed and deserted her. Aristide's pious fraud had never deceived her for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping every time that curiosity, or pity, or something—she knew not what—would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her simple peasant's soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed.



"She died for want of love, parbleu," said Aristide, "and there was mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time.... She had des yeux de pervenche. Ah! nom d'un chien! It is only with me that Providence plays such tricks."

He walked to the window and looked out into the grey street. Presently I heard him murmuring the words of the old French song:—

Elle est morte en fevrier; Pauvre Colinette!



VII

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MIRACLE

You have seen how Aristide, by attaching himself to the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse as a kind of glorified courier, had founded the Agence Pujol. As he, personally, was the Agence, and the Agence was he, it happened that when he was not in attendance at the hotel, the Agence faded into space, and when he made his appearance in the vestibule and hung up his placard by the bureau, the Agence at once burst again into the splendour of existence. Apparently the fitful career of the Agence Pujol lasted some years. Whenever a chance of more remunerative employment turned up, Aristide took it and dissolved the Agence. Whenever outrageous fortune chivied him with slings and arrows penniless to Paris, there was always the Agence waiting to be resuscitated.

It was during one of these periodic flourishings of the Agence Pujol that Aristide met the Ducksmiths.

Business was slack, few guests were at the hotel, and of those few none desired to be personally conducted to the Louvre or Notre Dame or the monument in the Place de la Bastille. They mostly wore the placid expression of folks engaged in business affairs instead of the worried look of pleasure-seekers.

"My good Bocardon," said Aristide, lounging by the bureau and addressing his friend the manager, "this is becoming desperate. In another minute I shall take you out by main force and show you the Pont Neuf."

At that moment the door of the stuffy salon opened, and a travelling Briton, whom Aristide had not seen before, advanced to the bureau and inquired his way to the Madeleine. Aristide turned on him like a flash.

"Sir," said he, extracting documents from his pockets with lightning rapidity, "nothing would give me greater pleasure than to conduct you thither. My card. My tariff. My advertisement." He pointed to the placard. "I am the managing director of the Agence Pujol, under the special patronage of this hotel. I undertake all travelling arrangements, from the Moulin Rouge to the Pyramids, and, as you see, my charges are moderate."

The Briton, holding the documents in a pudgy hand, looked at the swift-gestured director with portentous solemnity. Then, with equal solemnity, he looked at Bocardon.

"Monsieur Ducksmith," said the latter, "you can repose every confidence in Monsieur Aristide Pujol."

"Umph!" said Mr. Ducksmith.

After another solemn inspection of Aristide, he stuck a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his fleshy nose and perused the documents. He was a fat, heavy man of about fifty years of age, and his scanty hair was turning grey. His puffy cheeks hung jowl-like, giving him the appearance of some odd dog—a similarity greatly intensified by the eye-sockets, the lower lids of which were dragged down in the middle, showing the red like a bloodhound's; but here the similarity ended, for the man's eyes, dull and blue, had the unspeculative fixity of a rabbit's. His mouth, small and weak, dribbled away at the corners into the jowls which, in their turn, melted into two or three chins. He was decently dressed in grey tweeds, and wore a diamond ring on his little finger.

"Umph!" said he, at last; and went back to the salon.

As soon as the door closed behind him Aristide sprang into an attitude of indignation.

"Did you ever see such a bear! If I ever saw a bigger one I would eat him without salt or pepper. Mais nom d'un chien, such people ought to be made into sausages!"

"Flegme britannique!" laughed Bocardon.

Half an hour passed, and Mr. Ducksmith made no reappearance from the salon. In the forlorn hope of a client Aristide went in after him. He found Mr. Ducksmith, glasses on nose, reading a newspaper, and a plump, black-haired lady, with an expressionless face, knitting a grey woollen sock. Why they should be spending their first morning—and a crisp, sunny morning, too—in Paris in the murky staleness of this awful little salon, Aristide could not imagine. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded him vacantly over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.

"I have looked in," said Aristide, with his ingratiating smile, "to see whether you are ready to go to the Madeleine."

"Madeleine?" the lady inquired, softly, pausing in her knitting.

"Madame," Aristide came forward, and, hand on heart, made her the lowest of bows. "Madame, have I the honour of speaking to Madame Ducksmith? Enchanted, madame, to make your acquaintance," he continued, after a grunt from Mr. Ducksmith had assured him of the correctness of his conjecture. "I am Monsieur Aristide Pujol, director of the Agence Pujol, and my poor services are absolutely at your disposal."

He drew himself up, twisted his moustache, and met her eyes—they were rather sad and tired—with the roguish mockery of his own. She turned to her husband.

"Are you thinking of going to the Madeleine, Bartholomew?"

"I am, Henrietta," said he. "I have decided to do it. And I have also decided to put ourselves in the charge of this gentleman. Mrs. Ducksmith and I are accustomed to all the conveniences of travel—I may say that we are great travellers—and I leave it to you to make the necessary arrangements. I prefer to travel at so much per head per day."

He spoke in a wheezy, solemn monotone, from which all elements of life and joy seemed to have been eliminated. His wife's voice, though softer in timbre, was likewise devoid of colour.

"My husband finds that it saves us from responsibilities," she remarked.

"And over-charges, and the necessity of learning foreign languages, which at our time of life would be difficult. During all our travels we have not been to Paris before, owing to the impossibility of finding a personally-conducted tour of an adequate class."

"Then, my dear sir," cried Aristide, "it is Providence itself that has put you in the way of the Agence Pujol. I will now conduct you to the Madeleine without the least discomfort or danger."

"Put on your hat, Henrietta," said Mr. Ducksmith, "while this gentleman and I discuss terms."

Mrs. Ducksmith gathered up her knitting and retired, Aristide dashing to the door to open it for her. This gallantry surprised her ever so little, for a faint flush came into her cheek and the shadow of a smile into her eyes.

"I wish you to understand, Mr. Pujol," said Mr. Ducksmith, "that being, I may say, a comparatively rich man, I can afford to pay for certain luxuries; but I made a resolution many years ago, which has stood me in good stead during my business life, that I would never be cheated. You will find me liberal but just."

He was as good as his word. Aristide, who had never in his life exploited another's wealth to his own advantage, suggested certain terms, on the basis of so much per head per day, which Mr. Ducksmith declared, with a sigh of relief, to be perfectly satisfactory.

"Perhaps," said he, after further conversation, "you will be good enough to schedule out a month's railway tour through France, and give me an inclusive estimate for the three of us. As I say, Mrs. Ducksmith and I are great travellers—we have been to Norway, to Egypt, to Morocco and the Canaries, to the Holy Land, to Rome, and lovely Lucerne—but we find that attention to the trivial detail of travel militates against our enjoyment."

"My dear sir," said Aristide, "trust in me, and your path and that of the charming Mrs. Ducksmith will be strewn with roses."

Whereupon Mrs. Ducksmith appeared, arrayed for walking out, and Aristide, having ordered a cab, drove with them to the Madeleine. They alighted in front of the majestic flight of steps. Mr. Ducksmith stared at the classical portico supported on its Corinthian columns with his rabbit-like, unspeculative gaze—he had those filmy blue eyes that never seem to wink—and after a moment or two turned away.

"Umph!" said he.

Mrs. Ducksmith, dutiful and silent, turned away also.

"This sacred edifice," Aristide began, in his best cicerone manner, "was built, after a classic model, by the great Napoleon, as a Temple of Fame. It was afterwards used as a church. You will observe—and, if you care to, you can count, as a conscientious American lady did last week—the fifty-six Corinthian columns. You will see they are Corinthian by the acanthus leaves on the capitals. For the vulgar, who have no architectural knowledge, I have memoria technica for the instant recognition of the three orders—Cabbages, Corinthian; horns, Ionic; anything else, Doric. We will now mount the steps and inspect the interior."

He was dashing off in his eager fashion, when Mr. Ducksmith laid a detaining hand on his arm.

"No," said he, solemnly. "I disapprove of Popish interiors. Take us to the next place."



He entered the waiting victoria. His wife meekly followed.

"I suppose the Louvre is the next place?" said Aristide.

"I leave it to you," said Mr. Ducksmith.

Aristide gave the order to the cabman and took the little seat in the cab facing his employers. On the way down the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli he pointed out the various buildings of interest—Maxim's, the Cercle Royal, the Ministere de la Marine, the Hotel Continental. Two expressionless faces, two pairs of unresponsive eyes, met his merry glance. He might as well have pointed out the marvels of Kubla Khan's pleasure-dome to a couple of guinea-pigs.

The cab stopped at the entrance to the galleries of the Louvre. They entered and walked up the great staircase on the turn of which the Winged Victory stands, with the wind of God in her vesture, proclaiming to each beholder the deathless, ever-soaring, ever-conquering spirit of man, and heralding the immortal glories of the souls, wind-swept likewise by the wind of God, that are enshrined in the treasure-houses beyond.

"There!" said Aristide.

"Umph! No head," said Mr. Ducksmith, passing it by with scarcely a glance.

"Would it cost very much to get a new one?" asked Mrs. Ducksmith, timidly. She was three or four paces behind her spouse.

"It would cost the blood and tears and laughter of the human race," said Aristide.

("That was devilish good, wasn't it?" remarked Aristide, when telling me this story. He always took care not to hide his light under the least possibility of a bushel.)

The Ducksmiths looked at him in their lacklustre way, and allowed themselves to be guided into the picture-galleries, vaguely hearing Aristide's comments, scarcely glancing at the pictures, and manifesting no sign of interest in anything whatever. From the Louvre they drove to Notre Dame, where the same thing happened. The venerable pile, standing imperishable amid the vicissitudes of centuries (the phrase was that of the director of the Agence Pujol), stirred in their bosoms no perceptible emotion. Mr. Ducksmith grunted and declined to enter; Mrs. Ducksmith said nothing.

As with pictures and cathedrals, so it was with their food at lunch. Beyond a solemn statement to the effect that in their quality of practised travellers they made a point of eating the food and drinking the wine of the country, Mr. Ducksmith did not allude to the meal. At any rate, thought Aristide, they don't clamour for underdone chops and tea. So far they were human. Nor did they maintain an awful silence during the repast. On the contrary, Mr. Ducksmith loved to talk—in a dismal, pompous way—chiefly of British politics. His method of discourse was to place himself in the position of those in authority and to declare what he would do in any given circumstances. Now, unless the interlocutor adopts the same method and declares what he would do, conversation is apt to become one-sided. Aristide, having no notion of a policy should he find himself exercising the functions of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, cheerfully tried to change the ground of debate.

"What would you do, Mr. Ducksmith, if you were King of England?"

"I should try to rule the realm like a Christian statesman," replied Mr. Ducksmith.

"I should have a devil of a time!" said Aristide.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Ducksmith.

"I should have a—ah, I see—pardon. I should——" He looked from one paralyzing face to the other, and threw out his arms. "Parbleu!" said he, "I should decapitate your Mrs. Grundy, and make it compulsory for bishops to dance once a week in Trafalgar Square. Tiens! I would have it a capital offence for any English cook to prepare hashed mutton without a license, and I would banish all the bakers of the kingdom to Siberia—ah! your English bread, which you have to eat stale so as to avoid a horrible death!—and I would open two hundred thousand cafes—mon Dieu! how thirsty I have been there!—and I would make every English work-girl do her hair properly, and I would ordain that everybody should laugh three times a day, under pain of imprisonment for life."

"I am afraid, Mr. Pujol," remarked Mr. Ducksmith, seriously, "you would not be acting as a constitutional monarch. There is such a thing as the British Constitution, which foreigners are bound to admire, even though they may not understand."

"To be a king must be a great responsibility," said Mrs. Ducksmith.

"Madame," said Aristide, "you have uttered a profound truth." And to himself he murmured, though he should not have done so, "Nom de Dieu! Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!"

After lunch they drove to Versailles, which they inspected in the same apathetic fashion; then they returned to the hotel, where they established themselves for the rest of the day in the airless salon, Mr. Ducksmith reading English newspapers and his wife knitting a grey woollen sock.

"Mon vieux!" said Aristide to Bocardon, "they are people of a nightmare. They are automata endowed with the faculty of digestion. Ce sont des gens invraisemblables."

Paris providing them, apparently, with no entertainment, they started, after a couple of days, Aristide duce et auspice Pujol, on their railway tour through France, to Aristide a pilgrimage of unimaginable depression. They began with Chartres, continued with the Chateaux of the Loire, and began to work their way south. Nothing that Aristide could do roused them from their apathy. They were exasperatingly docile, made few complaints, got up, entrained, detrained, fed, excursioned, slept, just as they were bidden. But they looked at nothing, enjoyed nothing (save perhaps English newspapers and knitting), and uttered nothing by way of criticism or appreciation when Aristide attempted to review the wonders through which they had passed. They did not care to know the history, authentic or Pujolic, of any place they visited; they were impressed by no scene of grandeur, no corner of exquisite beauty. To go on and on, in a dull, non-sentient way, so long as they were spared all forethought, all trouble, all afterthought, seemed to be their ideal of travel. Sometimes Aristide, after a fruitless effort to capture their interest, would hold his head, wondering whether he or the Ducksmith couple were insane. It was a dragon-fly personally conducting two moles through a rose-garden.

Once only, during the early part of their journey, did a gleam of joyousness pierce the dull glaze of Mr. Ducksmith's eyes. He had procured from the bookstall of a station a pile of English newspapers, and was reading them in the train, while his wife knitted the interminable sock. Suddenly he folded a Daily Telegraph, and handed it over to Aristide so that he should see nothing but a half-page advertisement. The great capitals leaped to Aristide's eyes:—

"DUCKSMITH'S DELICATE JAMS."

"I am the Ducksmith," said he. "I started and built up the business. When I found that I could retire, I turned it into a limited liability company, and now I am free and rich and able to enjoy the advantages of foreign travel."

Mrs. Ducksmith started, sighed, and dropped a stitch.

"Did you also make pickles?" asked Aristide.

"I did manufacture pickles, but I made my name in jam. In the trade you will find it an honoured one."

"It is that in every nursery in Europe," Aristide declared, with polite hyperbole.

"I have done my best to deserve my reputation," said Mr. Ducksmith, as impervious to flattery as to impressions of beauty.

"Pecaire!" said Aristide to himself, "how can I galvanize these corpses?"

As the soulless days went by this problem grew to be Aristide's main solicitude. He felt strangled, choked, borne down by an intolerable weight. What could he do to stir their vitality? Should he fire off pistols behind them, just to see them jump? But would they jump? Would not Mr. Ducksmith merely turn his rabbit-eyes, set in their bloodhound sockets, vacantly on him, and assume that the detonations were part of the tour's programme? Could he not fill him up with conflicting alcohols, and see what inebriety would do for him? But Mr. Ducksmith declined insidious potations. He drank only at meal-times, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thais might come along, cast her spell upon him, and induce him to wink. He himself was powerless. His raciest stories fell on dull ears; none of his jokes called forth a smile. At last, having taken them to nearly all the historic chateaux of Touraine, without eliciting one cry of admiration, he gave Mr. Ducksmith up in despair and devoted his attention to the lady.

Mrs. Ducksmith parted her smooth black hair in the middle and fastened it in a knob at the back of her head. Her clothes were good and new, but some desolate dressmaker had contrived to invest them with an air of hopeless dowdiness. At her bosom she wore a great brooch, containing intertwined locks of a grandfather and grandmother long since defunct. Her mind was as drearily equipped as her person. She had a vague idea that they were travelling in France; but if Aristide had told her that it was Japan she would have meekly accepted the information. She had no opinions. Still she was a woman, and Aristide, firm in his conviction that when it comes to love-making all women are the same, proceeded forthwith to make love to her.

"Madame," said he, one morning—she was knitting in the vestibule of the Hotel du Faisan at Tours, Mr. Ducksmith being engaged, as usual, in the salon with his newspapers—"how much more charming that beautiful grey dress would be if it had a spot of colour."

His audacious hand placed a deep crimson rose against her corsage, and he stood away at arm's length, his head on one side, judging the effect.

"Magnificent! If madame would only do me the honour to wear it."

Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.

"I'm afraid my husband does not like colour," she said.

"He must be taught," cried Aristide. "You must teach him. I must teach him. Let us begin at once. Here is a pin."

He held the pin delicately between finger and thumb, and controlled her with his roguish eyes. She took the pin and fixed the rose to her dress.

"I don't know what Mr. Ducksmith will say."

"What he ought to say, madame, is 'Bountiful Providence, I thank Thee for giving me such a beautiful wife.'"

Mrs. Ducksmith blushed and, to conceal her face, bent it over her resumed knitting. She made woman's time-honoured response.

"I don't think you ought to say such things, Mr. Pujol."

"Ah, madame," said he, lowering his voice; "I have tried not to; but, que voulez-vous, it was stronger than I. When I see you going about like a little grey mouse"—the lady weighed at least twelve stone—"you, who ought to be ravishing the eyes of mankind, I feel indignation here"—he thumped his chest; "my Provencal heart is stirred. It is enough to make one weep."

"I don't quite understand you, Mr. Pujol," she said, dropping stitches recklessly.

"Ah, madame," he whispered—and the rascal's whisper on such occasions could be very seductive—"that I will never believe."

"I am too old to dress myself up in fine clothes," she murmured.

"That's an illusion," said he, with a wide-flung gesture, "that will vanish at the first experiment."

Mr. Ducksmith emerged from the salon, Daily Telegraph in hand. Mrs. Ducksmith shot a timid glance at him and the knitting needles clicked together nervously. But the vacant eyes of the heavy man seemed no more to note the rose on her bosom than they noted any point of beauty in landscape or building.

Aristide went away chuckling, highly diverted by the success of his first effort. He had touched some hidden springs of feeling. Whatever might happen, at any rate, for the remainder of the tour he would not have to spend his emotional force in vain attempts to knock sparks out of a jelly-fish. He noticed with delight that at dinner that evening Mrs. Ducksmith, still wearing the rose, had modified the rigid sweep of her hair from the mid-parting. It gave just a wavy hint of coquetry. He made her a little bow and whispered, "Charming!" Whereupon she coloured and dropped her eyes. And during the meal, while Mr. Ducksmith discoursed on bounty-fed sugar, his wife and Aristide exchanged, across the table, the glances of conspirators. After dinner he approached her.

"Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?"

She laid down her knitting. "Bartholomew, will you come out?"

He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head.

"What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen."

So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.

"Wouldn't you like," said he, "to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?"

"What odd things you think of."

"But wouldn't you?" he insinuated.

Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful "Yes."

"I can tell you of many odd things," said Aristide. "I can tell you how flowers sing and what colour there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun. Chere madame," he went on, after a pause, touching her little plump hand, "you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn't that so?"

She nodded.

"You have always been misunderstood."

A tear fell. Our rascal saw the glistening drop with peculiar satisfaction. Poor Mrs. Ducksmith! It was a child's game. Enfin, what woman could resist him? He had, however, one transitory qualm of conscience, for, with all his vagaries, Aristide was a kindly and honest man. Was it right to disturb those placid depths? Was it right to fill this woman with romantic aspirations that could never be gratified? He himself had not the slightest intention of playing Lothario and of wrecking the peace of the Ducksmith household. The realization of the saint-like purity of his aims reassured him. When he wanted to make love to a woman, pour tout de bon, it would not be to Mrs. Ducksmith.

"Bah!" said he to himself. "I am doing a noble and disinterested act. I am restoring sight to the blind. I am giving life to one in a state of suspended animation. Tron de l'Air! I am playing the part of a soul-reviver! And, parbleu! it isn't Jean or Jacques that can do that. It takes an Aristide Pujol!"

So, having persuaded himself, in his Southern way, that he was executing an almost divine mission, he continued, with a zest now sharpened by an approving conscience, to revive Mrs. Ducksmith's soul.

The poor lady, who had suffered the blighting influence of Mr. Ducksmith for twenty years with never a ray of counteracting warmth from the outside, expanded like a flower to the sun under the soul-reviving process. Day by day she exhibited some fresh timid coquetry in dress and manner. Gradually she began to respond to Aristide's suggestions of beauty in natural scenery and exquisite building. On the ramparts of Angouleme, daintiest of towns in France, she gazed at the smiling valleys of the Charente and the Son stretching away below, and of her own accord touched his arm lightly and said: "How beautiful!" She appealed to her husband.

"Umph!" said he.

Once more (it had become a habit) she exchanged glances with Aristide. He drew her a little farther along, under pretext of pointing out the dreamy sweep of the Charente.

"If he appreciates nothing at all, why on earth does he travel?"

Her eyelids fluttered upwards for a fraction of a second.

"It's his mania," she said. "He can never rest at home. He must always be going on—on."

"How can you endure it?" he asked.

She sighed. "It is better now that you can teach me how to look at things."

"Good!" thought Aristide. "When I leave them she can teach him to look at things and revive his soul. Truly I deserve a halo."