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The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol (American Magazine series)/The Adventure of the Foundling

was a time when Aristide Pujol, in sole charge of an automobile, went gaily scuttering over the roads of France. I use the word advisedly. If you had heard the awful thing as it passed by, you would agree that it is the only word adequate to express its hideous mode of progression. It was a two-seated, scratched, battered, ramshackle, tin concern of hoary antiquity, belonging to the childhood of the race. Not only horses, but other automobiles shied at it. It was a vehicle of derision. Yet Aristide regarded it with glowing pride and drove it with such dare-deviltry that the parts must have held together only through sheer, breathless wonder. Had it not been for the car, he told me, he would not have undertaken the undignified employment in which he was then engaged—the mountebank selling of a corn-cure in the public places of small towns and villages. It was not a fitting pursuit for a late managing director of a public company and an ex-Professor of French in an English Academy for Young Ladies. He wanted to rise, ma foi, not descend in the social scale. But when hunger drives—que voulez-vous? Besides, there was the automobile. It is true he had bound himself by his contract to exhibit a board at the back bearing a flaming picture of the success of the cure and a legend, “'Guérissez vos cors,” and to display a banner with the same device, when weather permitted. But still there was the automobile.

It had been lying for many motor-ages in the shed of the proprietors of the cure, the Maison Hiéropath of Marseilles, neglected, forlorn, eaten by rust and worm, when suddenly an idea occurred to their business imagination. Why should they not use the automobile to advertise and sell the cure about the country? The apostle in charge would pay for his own petrol, take a large percentage on sales, and the usual traveler's commission on orders that he might place. But where to find an apostle? Brave and desperate men came in high hopes, looked at the car and, shaking their heads sorrowfully, went away. At last, at the loosest of ends, came Aristide. The splendor of the idea—a poet, in his way, was Aristide, and the Idea was the thing that always held him captive—the splendor of the idea of dashing up to hotels in his own automobile, dazzled him. He beheld himself doing his hundred: kilometres an hour and trailing clouds of glory whithersoever he went. To a child a motheaten rocking-horse is a fiery Arab of the plains; to Aristide Pujol this cheat of the scrapheap was a sixty-horse-power thunderer and devourer of space.

How they managed to botch up her interior so that she moved unpushed is a mystery which Aristide, not divining, could not reveal; and when and where he himself learned to drive a motor-car is also vague. I believe the knowledge came by nature. He was a fellow of many weird accomplishments. He could conjure; he could model birds and beasts out of bread-crumb; he could play the drum—so well that he had a kettle-drum hanging round his neck during most of his military service; he could make omelettes and rabbit-hutches; he could imitate any animal that ever emitted sound—a gift that endeared him to children; he could do almost anything you please—save stay in one place and acquire material possessions. The fact that he had never done a thing before was to him no proof of his inability to doit. In his superb self-confidence he would have undertaken to conduct the orchestra at Covent Garden or navigate a liner across the Atlantic. Knowing this, I cease to bother my head about so small a matter as the way in which he learned to drive a motor-car.

Behold him, then, one raw March morning, scuttering along the road that leads from Arles to Salon in Provence. He wore a goatskin coat and a goat-skin cap drawn down well over his ears. His handsome bearded face, with its lustrous laughing eyes, peeped out curiously human amid the circumambient shagginess. There was not a turn visible in the long, straight road that lost itself in the far distant mist; not a speck on it signifying cart or creature. Aristide Pujol gave himself up to the delirium of speed and urged the half-bursting engine to twenty miles an hour. In spite of the racing-track surface, the crazy car bumped and jolted; the sides of the rickety bonnet clashed like cymbals; every valve wheezed and squealed; every nut seemed to have got loose and terrifically clattered; rattling noises, grunting noises, screeching noises, escaped from every part; it creaked and clanked like an over-insured tramp in a typhoon; it lurched as though afflicted with locomotor ataxia; and noisome vapors belched forth from the open exhaust-pipe as though the car were a Tophet on wheels. But all was music in the ears of Aristide. The car was going (it did not always go), the road scudded under him and the morning air dashed stingingly into his face. For the moment he desired nothing more of life.

This road between Arles and Salon runs through one of the most desolate parts of France: a long, endless plain, about five miles broad, lying between two long, low ranges Of hills. It is strewn like a monstrous Golgotha, not with skulls, but with huge smooth pebbles, as massed together as the shingle on a beach. Rank grass shoots up in what interstices it finds; but beyond this nothing grows. Nothing can grow. On a sunless day under a lowering sky it is a land accursed. Mile after mile for nearly twenty miles stretches this stony and barren waste. No human habitation cheers the sight, for from such a soil no human hand could wrest a sustenance. Only the rare traffic going from Arles to Salon and from Salon to Arles passes along the road. The cheery passing show of the live highway is wanting; there are no children, no dogs, no ducks and hens, no men and women lounging. to their work; no red-trousered soldiers on bicycles, no blue-bloused, weather-beaten farmers jogging along in their little carts. As far as the eye can reach nothing suggestive of man meets the view. Nothing but the infinite barrenness of the plain, the ridges on either side, the long, straight, endless road cleaving through this abomination of desolation.

To walk through it would be a task as depressing as mortal could execute. But to the speed-drunken motorist it is a realization of dim and tremulous visions of Paradise. What need to look to right or left when you are swallowing up free mile after mile of dizzying road? Aristide looked neither to right nor left, and knew this was heaven at last.

Suddenly, however, he became aware of a small black spot far ahead in the very middle of the unencumbered track. As he drew near it looked like a great stone. He swerved as he passed it and, looking, saw that it was a bundle wrapped in a striped blanket. It seemed so odd that it should be lying there that, his curiosity being aroused, he pulled up and walked back a few yards to examine it. The nearer he approached the less did it resemble an ordinary bundle. He bent down and lo! between the folds of the blanket peeped the face of a sleeping child.

“Nom de Dieu!” cried Aristide. “Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!”

He ought not to have said it, but his atonishment was great. He stared at the baby, then up and down the road, then swept the horizon. Not a soul was visible. How did the baby get there? The heavens, according to history, have rained many things in their time: bread, quails, blood, frogs and what not; but there is no mention of their ever having rained babies. It could not, therefore, have come from the clouds. It could not even have fallen from the tail of a cart, for then it would have been killed, or at least have broken its bones and generally been rendered a different baby from the sound, chubby mite sleeping as peacefully as though the Aceldama of Provence had been its cradle from birth. It could not have come there accidentally. Deliberate hands had laid it down; in the center of the road, too. Why not by the side, where it would have been out of the track of thundering automobiles? When the murderous intent became obvious, Aristide shivered and felt sick. He breathed fierce and honest anathema on the heads of the bowelless fiends who had abandoned the babe to its doom. Then he stooped and picked up the bundle tenderly in his arms.

The wee face puckered for a moment and the wee limbs shot out vigorously; then the blue eyes opened and stared Aristide solemnly and wonderingly in the face. So must the infant Remus have first regarded his she-wolf mother. Having ascertained, however, that it was not going to be devoured, it began to cry lustily, showing two little white specks of teeth in the lower gum.

“Mon pauvre petit, you are hungry,” said Aristide, carrying it to the car racked by the vibrating and clattering engine. “I wonder when you last tasted food. If I only had a little biscuit and wine to give you; but alas! there's nothing but petrol and corn-cure, neither of which, I believe, are good for babies. Wait, wait, mon chéri, until we get to Salon. There I promise you proper nourishment.”

He danced the baby up and down in his arms and made half-remembered and insane noises, which eventually had the effect of reducing it to its original calm stare of wonderment.

"Voilà,” said Aristide, delighted. “Now we can advance.”

He deposited it on the vacant seat, clambered up behind the wheel, and started. But not at the break-neck speed of twenty miles an hour. He went slowly and carefully, his heart in his mouth at every lurch of the afflicted automobile, fearful lest the child should be precipitated from its slippery resting-place. But alas! he did not proceed far. At the end of a kilometre the engine stopped dead. He leaped out to see what had happened, and, after a few perplexed and exhausting moments, remembered. He had not even petrol to offer to the baby, having omitted—most feather-headed of mortals—to fill up his tank before starting, and forgotten to bring a spare tin. There was nothing to be done save wait patiently until another motorist should pass by from whom he might purchase the necessary amount of essence to carry him on to Salon. Meanwhile, the baby would go breakfastless. Aristide clambered back to his seat, took the child on his knees and commiserated it profoundly. Sitting there on his apparently home-made vehicle, in the midst of the unearthly silence of the sullen and barren wilderness, attired in his shaggy goatskin cap and coat, he resembled an up-to-date Robinson Crusoe dandling an infant Friday.

The disposal of the child at Salon would be simple. After having it fed and tended at a hotel, he would make his deposition to the police, who would take it to the Enfants Trouvés, the department of state which provides fathers and mothers and happy homes for foundlings at a cost to the country of twenty-five francs a month per foundling. It is true that the parents so provided think more of the twenty-five francs than they do of the foundling. But that was the affair of the state, not of Aristide Pujol. In the meanwhile he examined the brat curiously. It was dressed in a coarse calico jumper, very unclean. The striped blanket was full of holes and stank abominably. Some sort of toilet appeared essential. He got down and from his valise took what seemed necessary to the purpose. The jumper and blanket he threw far on the pebbly waste. The baby, stark naked for a few moments, crowed and laughed and stretched like a young animal, revealing itself to be a sturdy boy about nine months old. When he seemed fit to be clad, Aristide tied him up in the lower part of a suit of pajamas, cutting little holes in the sides for his tiny arms; and, further, with a view to cheating his hunger, provided him with a shoe-horn. The defenseless little head he managed to squeeze into the split mouth of a woollen sock. Aristide regarded him in triumph. The boy chuckled gleefully. Then Aristide folded him warm in his traveling rug and entered into an animated conversation.

Now it happened that, at the most interesting point of the talk, the baby clutched Aristide's finger in his little brown hand. The tiny fingers clung strong. A queer thrill ran through the impressionable man. The tiny fingers seemed to close round his heart. .

It was a bonny, good-natured, gurgling scrap—and the pure blue eyes looked trustfully into his soul.

“Poor little wretch,” said Aristide, who, peasant's son that he was, knew what he was talking about. “Poor little wretch, if you go into the Enfants Trouvés, you'll have a devil of a time of it.”

The tiny clasp tightened. As if the babe understood, the chuckle died from his face.

“You'll be cuffed and kicked and half starved, while your adopted mother pockets her twenty-five francs a month, and you'll belong to nobody, and wonder why the deuce you're alive, and wish you were dead; and, if you remember to-dav, you'll curse me for not having had the decency to run over you.”

The clasp relaxed, puckers appeared at the corners of the dribbling mouth, and a myriad tiny horizontal lines of care marked the sock-capped brow.

“Poor little devil,” said Aristide. “My heart bleeds for you, especially now that you're dressed in my sock and pajama, and are sucking the only shoe-horn I ever possessed.”

A welcome sound caused Aristide to leap into the middle of the road. He looked ahead, and there in a cloud of dust a thing like a torpedo came swooping down. He held up both his arms, the signal of a motorist in distress. The torpedo approached with slackened speed, and stopped. It was an evil looking, drab, high-powered racer, and two bears with goggles sat in the midst thereof. The bear at the wheel raised his cap and asked courteously:

“What can we do for you, Monsieur?”

At that moment the baby broke into heart-rending cries. Aristide took off his goatskin cap and, remaining uncovered, looked at the bear, then at the baby, then at the bear again.

“Monsieur,” said he, “I suppose it's useless to ask you whether you have any milk and a feeding-bottle.”

“Mais dites donc!” shouted the bear furiously, his hand on the brake. “Stop an automobile like this on such a pretext”

Aristide held up a protesting hand and fixed the bear with the irresistible roguery of his eyes.

“Pardon, Monsieur, I am also out of petrol. Forgive a father's feelings. The baby wants milk and I want petrol, and I don't know whose need is the more imperative. But if you could sell me enough petrol to carry me to Salon, I should be most grateful.”

The request for petrol is not to be refused. To supply it, if possible, is the unwritten law of motordom. The second bear slid from his seat and extracted a tin from the recesses of the torpedo, and stood by. while Aristide filled his tank, a process that necessitated laying the baby on the ground. He smiled.

“You seem amused,” said Aristide.

“Parbleu!” said the motorist. “You have at the back of your auto a placard telling people to cure their corns, and in front you carry a baby.”

“That,” replied Aristide, “is easily understood. I am the agent of the Maison Hiéropath of Marseilles, and the baby, whom I, its father, am carrying from a dead mother to an invalid aunt, I am using as an advertisement. As he luckily has no corns, I can exhibit his feet as a proof of the efficacy of the corn-cure.”'

The bear laughed and joined his companion and the torpedo thundered away. Aristide replaced the baby and with a complicated arrangement of string fastened it securely to the seat. The baby, having ceased crying, clutched his beard as he bent over, and “goo'd” pleasantly. The tug was at his heartstrings. How could he give so fascinating, so valiant a mite over to the Enfants Trouvés? Besides, it belonged to him. Had he not in jest claimed paternity? It had given him a new importance. He could say “mon fils,” just as he could say (with equal veracity) “mon automobile.” A generous thrill ran through him. He burst into a loud laugh, clapped his hands and-danced before the delighted babe.

“Mon petit Jean,” said he, with humorous tenderness, “for I suppose your name is Jean; I will rend-myself in pieces before I let the Administration board you out among the wolves. You shall not to go the Enfants Trouvés. I myself will adopt you, mon petit Jean.'

As Aristide had no fixed abode whatever, the address-printed on his visiting card, “270 bis Rue St. Honoré, Paris,” being that of an old greengrocer woman of his acquaintance, who received and forwarded his letters, there was a certain amount of rashness in the undertaking. But when was Aristide otherwise than rash? Had prudence been his guiding principle through life, he would not have been selling corn-cure for the Maison Hiéropath, and consequently would not have discovered little Jean at all.

In great delight at this satisfactory settlement of little Jean's destiny, he started the ramshackle engine and drove triumphantly on his way. Jean, fatigued by the emotions of the last half hour, slumbered peacefully.

“The little angel,” said Aristide.

The sun was shining when they arrived at Salon, the gayest, the most coquettish, the mést laughing little town in Provence. It is a place all trees, and open spaces, and fountains and caíés, and smiling, sauntering people. The only thing grim about it is the solitary machicolated tower in the main street, the last vestige of ancient ramparts; and even that, close cuddled on each side by prosperous houses with shops beneath, looks like an old, old, wrinkled grandmother smiling amid her daintier grandchildren. Everyone seemed to be in the open air. Those who kept shops stood at the doorways. The prospect augured well for the Maison Hiéropath.

Aristide stopped before a hotel, disentangled Jean, to the mild interest of the passers-by, and, carrying him in, delivered him into the arms of the landlady.

“Madame,” said he, “this is my son. I am taking him from his mother, who is dead, to an aunt who is an invalid. So he is alone on my hands. He is very hungry and I beseech you to feed him at once.'

The motherly woman received the babe instinctively and cast aside the traveling rug in which he was enveloped. Then she nearly dropped him.

“''Mon dieu! Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?”''

She stared in stupefaction at the stocking cap and at the long flannel pajama legs that depended from the body of the infant around whose neck the waist was tightly drawn. Never since the world began had babe masqueraded in such attire. Aristide smiled his most engaging smile. |.

“My son's luggage has unfortunately been lost. His portmanteau, pauvre petit, was so small. A poor widower, I did what I could. I am but a mere man, Madame.”

“Evidently,” said the woman, with some asperity.

Aristide took a louis from his purse. “If you will purchase him some necessary articles of costume while I fulfil my duties towards the Maison Hiéropath of Marseilles, which I represent, you will be doing me a kindness.”

The landlady took the louis in a bewildered way. Allowing for the baby portmanteau to have gone astray, what, she asked, had become of the clothes he was wearing? Aristide entered upon a picturesque and realistic explanation. The landlady was stout, she was stupid, she could not grasp the fantastic.

“Mon Dieu,” she said. “To think that there are Christians who dress their children like this!” She sighed exhaustively, and holding the grotesque infant close to her breast, disappeared indignantly to administer the very greatly needed motherment.

Aristide breathed a sigh of relief, and after a well-earned déjeuner, went forth with the car into the Place des Arbres and prepared to ply his trade. First he unfurled the Hiéropath banner, which floated proudly in the breeze. Then on a folding table he displayed his collection of ointment-boxes (together with pills and a toothache killer which he sold on his own account) and a wax model of a human foot on which were grafted putty corns in every stage of callosity. As soon as half-a-dozen idlers collected, he commenced his harangue. When their numbers increased he performed prodigies of chiropody on the putty corns and demonstrated the proper application of the cure. He talked incessantly all the while. He has told me, in the grand manner, that this phase of his career was distasteful to him. But I scarcely believe it. If ever a man loved to talk, it was Aristide Pujol; and what profession, save that of an advocate, offers more occasion for wheedling loquacity than that of a public vendor of quack medicaments? As a matter of fact he reveled in it. When he offered a free box of the cure to the first lady who would confess the need thereof, and a blushing wench came forward, the rascal reveled in the opportunity for badinage which set the good-humored crowd in a roar. He loved to exert his half-mesmeric power. He had not the soul of a mountebank, for Aristide's soul had its high and generous dwelling-place; but he had the Puckish swiftness and mischief of which the successful mountebank is made. And he was a success, because he treated it as an art, thinking nothing during its practice of the material gain, laughing whole-heartedly like his great predecessor Tabarin of imperishable memory, and satisfying to the full his instinct for the dramatic. On the other hand, ever since he started life in the steel buttoned shell jacket of a chasseur in a Marseilles café, and dreamed dreams of the fairy-tale lives of the clients who came in accompanied by beautifully dressed ladies, he had social ambitions—and the social status of the mountebank is, to say the least of it, ambiguous. Ah, me! What would man be without the unattainable? An incredible cynic at my elbow says: “A jolly, happy fellow!”

Aristide pocketed his takings, struck his flag, dismantled his table and visited the shops of Salon in the interests of the Maison Hiéropath. The day's work over, he returned to inquire for his supposititious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet and a rakish cap, decorated with white satin ribbons, crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. Jean grinned and dribbled self-consciously, and showed his two little teeth to the proudest father in the world. The landlady invited the happy parent into her little dark parlor beyond the office, and there exhibited a parcel containing garments and implements whose use was a mystery to Aristide. She also demanded the greater part of another louis. Aristide began to learn that fatherhood is expensive. But what did it matter?

After all, here was a babe equipped to face the exigencies of a censorious world; in looks and apparel a credit to any father. As the afternoon was fine, and as it seemed a pity to waste satin and rabbit-fur on the murky interior of the hotel, Aristide borrowed a perambulator from the landlady, and, joyous as a schoolboy, wheeled the splendid infant through the sunny avenues of Salon.

That evening a bed was made up for the child in Aristide's room, which until its master retired for the night was haunted by the landlady, the chambermaids and all the kitchen wenches in the hotel. Aristide had to turn them out and lock his door.

“This is excellent,” said he, apostrophising the thoroughly fed, washed, and now sleeping child. “This is superb. As in every hotel there are women, and as every woman thinks she can be a much better mother than I, so in every hotel we visit we shall find a staff of trained and enthusiastic nurses. Jean, you will live like a little coq en pâte.”

The night passed amid various excursions on the part of Aristide and alarms on the part of Jean. Sometimes the child lay so still that Aristide arose to see whether he was alive. Sometimes he gave such proofs of vitality that Aristide, in terror lest he should awaken the whole hotel, walked him about the room chanting lullabies. This was in accordance with Jean's views on luxury. He “goo'd” with joy. When Aristide put him back to bed, he howled. Aristide snatched him up and he “goo'd” again. At last Aristide fed him desperately, dandled him eventually to sleep and returned to an excited pillow. It is a fearsome thing for a man to be left alone in the dead of night with a young baby.

“I'll get used to it,” said Aristide.

The next morning he purchased a basket which he lashed ingeniously on the left hand seat of the car, and a cushion which he fitted into the basket. The berth prepared, he deposited the sumptuously appareled Jean therein and drove away, amid the perplexed benisons of the landlady and her satellites.

Thus began the oddest Odyssey on which ever mortals embarked. The man with the automobile, the corn-cure and the baby grew to be legendary in the villages of Provence. When the days were fine, Jean in his basket assisted at the dramatic performance in the market-place. Becoming a magnet for the women, and being of a good-humored and rollicking nature, he helped on the sale of the cure prodigiously. He earned his keep, as Aristide declared in exultation. Soon Aristide formed a collection of his tricks and doings wherewith he would entertain the chance acquaintances of his vagabondage. To a permanent companion he would have grown insufferable. He invented him a career from the day of his birth, chronicled the coming of the first tooth, wept over the demise of the fictitious mother, and, in his imaginative way, convinced himself of his fatherhood. And every day the child crept deeper into the man's sunny heart.

Together they had many wanderings and many adventures. The wheezy, crazy mechanism of the car went to bits in unexpected places. They tobogganed down hills without a brake at the imminent peril of their lives. They suffered the indignity of being towed by wine-wagons. They spent hours by the way- side while Aristide took her to pieces and, sometimes with the help of a passing motorist, put her together again. Sometimes, too, an inn boasted no landlady; only a disheveled and overdriven chambermaid who refused to wash Jean. Aristide washed and powdered Jean himself, the landlord lounging by, pipe in mouth, administering suggestions. Once Jean grew ill and Aristide in terror summoned the doctor, who told him that he had filled the child up with milk to bursting point. Yet, in spite of heterogeneous nursing and exposure to sun and rain and piercing Mistral, Jean throve exceedingly and, to Aristide's delight, began to cut another tooth. The vain man began to regard himself as an expert in denticulture.

At the end of a fairly wide circuit, Aristide, with empty store boxes and pleasantly full pockets, arrived at the little town of Aix-en-Provence. He had arrived there not without difficulty. On the outskirts, the car, which had been coaxed reluctantly along for many weary kilometres, had groaned, rattled, whirred, given a couple of convulsive leaps and stood stock still. This was one of her pretty ways. He was used to them and hitherto he had been able to wheedle her into resumed motion. But this time, with all his cunning and perspiration, he could not induce another throb in the tired engines. A friendly motorist towed them to the Hótel de Paris in the Cours Mirabeau. Having arranged for his room and given Jean in charge of the landlady, he procured some helping hands and pushed the car to the nearest garage. There he gave orders for the car to be put into running condition for the following morning, and returned to the hotel.

He found Jean in the vestibule, sprawling sultanesquely on the landlady's lap, the center of an admiring circle which consisted of two little girls in pigtails, an ancient peasant woman and two English ladies of obvious but graceful spinsterhood.

“Here is the father,” said the landlady.

He had already explained Jean to the startled woman—landladies were always startled at Jean's unconventional advent. “Madame,” he had said, according to rigid formula, “this is my son. I am taking him from his mother, who is dead, to an aunt who is an invalid, so he is alone on my hands. I beseech you to let some kind woman attend to his necessities.”

There was no need of further explanation. Aristide, thus introduced, bowed politely, removed his Crusoe cap, and smiled luminously at the assembled women. They resumed their antiphonal chorus of worship. The brown, merry, friendly brat had something of Aristide's personal charm. He had a bubble and a goo for everyone. Aristide looked on in great delight. Jean was a son to be proud of.

“Ah! qu'il est fort—fort comme un Turc.”

“Regardez ses dents.”

“The darling thing!”

“Il est—oh dear!—il est ravissante!”—with a disastrous plunge into gender.

“''Tiens! il rit. C'est moi qui le fais rire''.”

“To think,” said the younger Englishwoman to her sister, “of this wee mite traveling about in an open motor.”

“He's having the time of his life. He enjoys it as much as I do,” said Aristide in his excellent English.

The lady started. She was a well-bred, good-humored woman in the middle thirties, stout, with reddish hair and irregular though comely features. Her sister was thin, faded, sandy and kind-looking.

“I thought you were French,” she said, apologetically.

“So I am,” replied Aristide. “Provençal of Provence, Méridional of the Midi, Marseillais of Marseilles.”

“But you talk English perfectly.”

“I've lived in your beautiful country,” said Aristide.

“You have the bonniest boy,” said the elder lady. “How old is he?”

 * Nine months three weeks and a day,” said Aristide promptly.

The younger lady bent over the miraculous infant.

“Can I take him? Est-ce que je puis—oh dear'—” she turned a whimsical face to Aristide.

He translated. The landlady surrendered the babe. The lady danced him with the spinster's charming awkwardness, yet with instinctive feminine security, about the hall, while the little girls in pigtails, daughters of the house, followed like adoratory angels in an altar piece, and the old peasant woman looked benignly on, a myriad-wrinkled Saint Elizabeth. Aristide had seen Jean dandled by dozens of women, during their brief comradeship; he had thought little of it, as it was the natural thing for women to do; but when this sweet English lady mothered Jean, it seemed to matter a great deal. She lifted Jean and himself to a higher plane. Her touch was a consecration.

It was the hour of the day when infants of nine months should be washed and put to bed. The landlady, announcing the fact, held out her arms. Jean clung to his English nurse, who played the fascinating game of pretending to eat his hand. The landlady had not that accomplishment. She was dull and practical.

“Come and be washed,” she said.

“Oh, do let me come too,” cried the English lady.

“Bien volontiers, Mademoiselle,” said the other. “C'est par ici.”

The English lady held Jean out for the paternal good night, Aristide kissed the child in her arms. The action brought about, for the moment, a curious and sweet intimacy.

“My sister is passionately fond of children,” said the elder lady, in smiling apology.

“And you?”

“I too. But Anne—my sister—will not let me have a chance when she is by.”

After dinner Aristide went up, as usual, to his room to see that Jean was alive, painless and asleep. Finding him awake, he sat by his side, and with the earnestness of a nursery-maid, patted him off to slumber. Then he went out on tiptoe and went downstairs. Outside the hotel he came upon the two sisters sitting on a bench and drinking coffee. The night was fine, the terraces of the neighboring cafés were filled with people, and all the life of Aix, not at the cafés, promenaded up and down the wide and pleasant avenue. The ladies smiled. How was the boy? He gave the latest news. Permission to join them at their coffee was graciously given. A waiter brought a chair and he sat down. Conversation drifted from the baby to general topics. The ladies told the simple story of their tour. They had been to Nice and Marseilles, and they were going on the next day to Avignon. They also told their name—Honeywood. He gathered that the elder was Janet, the younger Anne. They lived at Chiselhurst when they were in England, and often came up to London to attend the Queen's Hall Concerts and the dramatic performances at His Majesty's Theatre. As guileless, though as self-reliant gentlewomen as sequestered England could produce. Aristide, impressionable and responsive, fell at once into the key of their talk. He has told me that their society produced on him the effect of the cool hands of saints against his cheek.

At last the conversation inevitably returned to Jean. The landlady had related the tragic history of the dead mother and the invalid aunt. They deplored the orphaned state of the precious babe. For he was precious, they declared. Miss Anne had taken him to her heart.

“If only you had seen him in his bath, Janet!”

She turned to Aristide. “I'm afraid,” she said very softly, hesitating a little—“I'm afraid this must be a sad journey for you.”

He made a wry mouth. The sympathy was so sincere, so womanly. That which was generous in him revolted against acceptance.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I can play a farce with landladies—it happens to be convenient—in fact, necessary. But with you—no. You are different. Jean is not my child, and who his parents are I've not the remotest idea.”

“Not your child?” They looked at him incredulously.

“I will tell you—in confidence,” said he.

Jean's history was related in all its picturesque details; the horrors of the life of an enfant trouvé luridly depicted. The sisters listened with tears in their foolish eyes. Behind the tears Anne's grew bright. When he had finished she stretched out her hand impulsively.

“Oh, I call it splendid of you!”

He took the hand, and in his graceful French fashion, touched it with his lips. She flushed, having expected in her English way, that he would grasp it.

“Your commendation, Mademoiselle, is sweet to hear,” said he.

“I hope he will grow up to be a true comfort to you, Monsieur Pujol,” said Miss Janet.

“I can understand a woman doing what you've done, but scarcely a man,” said Miss Anne.

“But, dear Mademoiselle,” cried Aristide, with a large gesture, “cannot a man have his heart touched, his—his—ses entrailles, enfin—stirred by baby fingers? Why should love of the helpless and the innocent, of a forsaken and hapless child be denied him?”

“Why indeed?” said Miss Janet.

Miss Anne said humbly: “I only meant that your devotion to Jean was all the more beautiful, Monsieur Pujol.”

Soon after this they parted, the night air having grown chill. Both ladies shook hands with him warmly. Anne's lingered the fraction of a second longer in his than Janet's. She had seen Jean in his bath.

Aristide wandered down the gay avenue into the open road and looked at the stars, reading in their splendor a brilliant destiny for Jean. He felt, in his sensitive way, that the two sweet-souled English women had deepened and sanctified his love for Jean. When he returned to the hotel, he kissed his incongruous room-mate with the gentleness of a woman.

In the morning he went round to the garage. The foreman mechanician advanced to meet him.

“Well?”

“There's nothing to be done, Monsieur.”

“What do mean by 'nothing to be done'?” asked Aristide.

The other shrugged his sturdy shoulders.

“She is worn out. She needs new carburation, new cylinders, new water-circulation, new lubrication, new valves, new brakes, new ignition, new gears, new bolts, new nuts, new everything. In short, she is not repairable.”

Aristide listened in incredulous amazement. His automobile, his wonderful, beautiful, clashing, dashing automobile unrepairable! It was impossible. But a quarter of an hour's demonstration by the foreman convinced him. The car was dead. The engine would never whirr again. All the petrol in the world would not stimulate her into life. Never again would he sit behind that wheel rejoicing in the insolence of speed. The car, which in spite of her manifold infirmities, he had fondly imagined to be immortal, had run her last course. Aristide felt faint.

“And there is nothing to be done?”

“Nothing, Monsieur. Fifty francs is all that she is worth.”

“At any rate,” said Aristide, “send the basket to the Hôtel de Paris.”

He went out of the garage like a man in a dream. At the door he turned to take a last look at the Pride of his Life. Her stern was towards him and all he saw of her was the ironical legend: “Cure your Corns.”

At the hotel he found the bench outside occupied chiefly by Jean. One of the little girls in pigtails was holding him, while Miss Anne administered the feeding-bottle. Provincial France is the happiest country in the world in that you can live your intimate, domestic life in public, and nobody heeds.

“I hope you've not come to tell Jean to boot and saddle,” said Miss Anne, a smile on her roughly-hewn, comely face.

“Alas!” said Aristide, cheered by the charming spectacle before him. “I don't know when we can get away. My auto has broken down hopelessly. I ought to go at once to my firm in Marseilles” (he spoke as if he were a partner in the Maison Hiéropath) “but I don't quite know what to do with Jean.”

“Oh, I'll look after Jean.”

“But you said you were leaving for Avignon to-day.”

She laughed, holding the feeding-bottle. “The Palace of the Popes has been standing for six centuries, and it will be still standing to-morrow; whereas Jean—” here Jean, for some reason known to himself, grinned wet and wide—“Isn't he the most fascinating thing of the Twentieth Century?” she cried, logically inconsequential, like most of her sex. “You go to Marseilles, Monsieur Pujol.”

So Aristide took the train to Marseilles—a half hour's journey—and in a quarter of the city resembling a fusion of Jarrow, an unfashionable part of St. Louis and a brimstone-manufacturing suburb of Gehenna, he interviewed the high authorities of the Maison Hiéropath. His cajolery could lead men into diverse lunacies, but it could not induce the hard-bitten manufacturer of quack remedies to provide a brand new automobile. The old auto had broken down. The manufacturer shrugged his shoulders. The mystery was that it had lasted as long as it did. The idea had originally been that of the junior partner, a scatter-brained youth whom at times they humored. Meanwhile, there being no be-placarded and be-flagged automobile, there could be no advertisement; therefore they had no further use for Monsieur Pujol's services.

“Good,” said Aristide when he reached the evil thoroughfare. “It was a degraded occupation and I am glad I am out of it. Meanwhile, here is Marseille before me, and it will be astonishing if I do not find some fresh road to fortune before the day is out.”

Aristide tramped and tramped all day through the streets of Marseilles, but the road he sought he did not find. He returned to Aix in dire perplexity. He was used to finding himself suddenly cut off from a means of livelihood. It was his chronic state of being. His gay resourcefulness had always carried him through. But then there had been only himself to think of. Now there was Jean. For the first time for many years the dragon-fly's wings grew limp.

Jean had already gone to sleep when he arrived. All day he had been as good as gold; so Miss Anne declared. For herself, she had spent the happiest day of her liíe.

“I don't wonder at your being devoted to him, Monsieur Pujol,” she said. “He has the most loving ways of any baby I ever met.”

Miss Janet joined them in the hall. They went in to dinner, Aristide sitting at the central table d'hôte, the ladies at a little table by themselves. After dinner they met again outside the hotel, and drank coffee and talked the evening away. He was not as bright a companion as on the night before. His gaiety was forced. He talked about everything else in the world but Jean. The temptation to pour his domestic troubles into the sympathetic ears of these two dear women he resisted. They regarded him as on a social equality, as a man of means engaged in some sort of business at Marseilles; they had invited him to bring Jean to see them at Chiselhurst. Pride forbade him to confess himself a homeless, penniless vagabond.

They retired early. Aristide again sought the message of the stars; but the sky was clouded over and soon a fine rain began to fall. A bock at a café brought him neither comfort nor inspiration. He returned to the hotel, and eluding a gossip-seeking landlady, went up to his room.

What could be done? Neither the sleeping babe nor himself could offer any suggestion. One thing was grimly inevitable. He and Jean must part. To carry him about like an infant prince in an automobile, had, after all, been a simple matter; to drag him through Heaven knew what hardships in his makeshift existence, was impossible. In his childlike, impulsive fashion he had not thought of the future when he adopted Jean. Aristide felt that the end of the world had come. His pacing to and fro awoke the child, who demanded, in his own way, the soothing rocking of his father's arms. There he bubbled and coo'd, till Aristide's heart nearly broke.

“What can I do with you, mon petit Jean?”

The Enfants Trouvés, after all? He thought of it with a shudder.

The child asleep again, he laid it on its bed, and then sat far into the night thinking barrenly. At last one of his sudden gleams of inspiration illuminated his mind. It was the only way. He took out his watch. It was four o'clock. What had to be done must be done swiftly.

In the traveling basket, which had been sent from the garage, he placed a pillow, and on to the pillow he transferred with breathless care the sleeping Jean, and wrapped him up snug and warm in bedclothes. Then he folded the tiny day garments that lay on a chair, collected the little odds and ends belonging to the child, took from his valise the rest of Jean's little wardrobe, and laid it at the foot of the basket. The most miserable man in France then counted up his money, divided it into two parts, wrote a hasty letter, which with the bundle of notes he enclosed in an envelope.

“My little Jean,” said he, laying the envelope on the child's breast. “Here is a little more than half my fortune. Half is for yourself and the little more to pay your wretched father's hotel bill. Good-bye, my little Jean. Je t'aime bien, tu sais—and don't reproach me.”

About an hour afterwards Miss Anne awoke and listened, and in a moment or two Miss Janet awoke also.

“Janet, do you hear that?”

“It's a child crying. It's outside the door.”

“It sounds like Jean.”

“Nonsense, my dear!”

But Anne switched on the light and went to see for herself; and there, in the tiny ante-room that separated the bedroom from the corridor, she found the basket—a new Pharaoh's daughter before a new little Moses in the bulrushes. In bewilderment she brought the ark into the room, and read the letter addressed to Janet and herself. She burst into tears. All she said was:

“Oh, Janet, why couldn't he have told us?”

And then she fell to hugging the child to her bosom.

Meanwhile Aristide Pujol, clad in his goatskin cap and coat, valise in hand, was plodding through the rain in scarch of the elusive phantom, fortune; gloriously certain that he had assured Jean's future, yet with such a heartache as he had never had in his life before.


text:
The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol (American Magazine series)/The Adventure of the Kind Mr. Smith

RISTIDE PUJOL started life on his own account as a chasseur in a Nice café—one of those luckless children tightly encased in bottle-green cloth by means of brass buttons, who earn a sketchy livelihood by enduring with cherubic smiles the continuous maledictions of the establishment. There he soothed his hours of servitude by dreams of vast ambitions. He would become the manager of a great hotel—not a contemptible hostelry where commercial travelers and seedy Germans were indifferently bedded, but one of those white palaces where milords (English) and millionaires (American) paid a thousand francs a night for a bedroom, and five louis for a glass of beer. Now in order to derive such profit from the Anglo-Saxon, a knowledge of English was indispensable. He resolved to learn the language. How he did so, except by sheer effrontery, taking linguistic toll of frequenters of the café, would be a mystery to anyone unacquainted with Aristide. But to his friends his mastery of the English tongue in such circumstances is comprehensible. To Aristide the impossible was ever the one thing easy of attainment; the possible the one thing he never could achieve. That was the paradoxical nature of the man. Before his days of hunted-little-devildom were over he had acquired sufficient knowledge of English to carry him, a few years later, through various vicissitudes in England, until, fired by new social ambitions and self-educated in a haphazard way, he found himself appointed Professor of French in an Academy for Young Ladies.

One of these days, when I can pin my dragon-fly friend down to a plain unvarnished autobiography, I may be able to trace some chronological sequence in the kaleidoscopic changes in his career. But hitherto, in his talks with me, he flits about from any one date to any other during a couple of decades, in a manner so confusing that for the present I abandon such an attempt. All I know about the date of the episode I am about to chronicle is that it occurred immediately after the termination of his engagement at the Academy just mentioned. Somehow, Aristide's history is a category of terminations.

If the head-mistress of the Academy had herself played dragon at his classes, all would have gone well. He would have made his pupils conjugate irregular verbs, rendered them adepts in the mysteries of the past participle and the subjunctive mood, and turned them out quite innocent of the idiomatic quaintnesses of the French tongue. But dis aliter visum. The gods always saw wrong-headedly otherwise in the case of Aristide. A weak-minded governess—and in a governess, a sense of humor and of novelty is always a sign of a weak mind—played dragon during Aristide's lessons. She appreciated his method which was colloquial. The colloquial Aristide was jocular. His lessons, therefore, were a giggling joy from beginning to end. He imparted to his pupils delicious knowledge. “''En avez-vous des-z-homards? Oh les sales bêtes, elles ont du toil aux pattes'',” which being translated is: “Have you any lobsters? Oh, the dirty animals, they have hair on their feet"—a catch phrase which, some years ago, added greatly to the gaiety of Paris, but in which I must confess to seeing no gleam of wit—became the historic property of the school. He recited to them, till they were word perfect, a music-hall ditty of the early eighties—“Sur le bi, sur le banc, sur le bi du bout du banc,” and delighted them with dissertations on Madame Yvette Guilbert's earlier repertoire. But for him they would have gone to their lives' end without knowing that pognon meant money, rouspétance, assaulting the police, Zune, a five-franc piece, and bouffer, to take nourishment. He made (according to his own statement) French a living language. There was never a school in Great Britain, the colonies or America on which the Parisian accent was so electrically impressed. The retort “Eh! ta soeur” was the purest Montmartre; also “fich'-moi la paix mon petit,” and “tu as un toupet, toi,” and the delectable locution, “allons étrangler un perroquet” (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surreptitious cocoa parties.

The progress that Academy made in a real grip of the French language was miraculous; but the knowledge it gained in French grammar and syntax was deplorable. A certain mid-term examination—the paper being set by a neighboring vicar—produced awful results. The phrase “How do you do, dear?” which ought, by all the rules of Stratford-atte-Bowe, to be translated by “Comment vous portez-vous, ma chère?” was rendered by most of the senior scholars “Ek, ma vieille, ça boulotte?” One innocent and anachronistic damsel writing on the execution of Charles I. declared that he “cracha dans le panier” in 1649, thereby mystifying the good vicar, who was unaware that “to spit into the basket” is to be guillotined. "This wealth of vocabulary was discounted by abject poverty in other branches of the language. No one could give a list of the words in “al” that took “s” in the plural; no one knew anything at all about the defective verb “échoir,” and the orthography of the school would have disgraced a kindergarten. The head-mistress suspected a lack of method in the teaching of Monsieur Pujol, and one day paid his class a surprise visit.

The sight that met her eyes petrified her. The class, including the governess, bubbled and gurgled and shrieked with laughter. Monsieur Pujol, his bright eyes agleam with merriment and his arms moving in frantic gestures, danced about the platform. He was telling them a story—and when Aristide told a story, he told it with the eloquence of his entire frame. He bent himself double and threw out his hands.

“Il était saoul comme un porc!” he shouted.

And then came the hush of death. The rest of the artless tale about the man as drunk as a pig was never told. The head-mistress, indignant majesty, strode up the room.

“Monsieur Pujol, you have a strange way of giving French lessons.”

“I believe, madam,” said he, with a polite bow, “in interesting my pupils in their studies.”

“Pupils have to be taught, not interested,” said the head-mistress. "Will you kindly put the class through some irregular verbs.”

So for the remainder of the lesson, Aristide, under the freezing eyes of the head-mistress, put his sorrowful class through irregular verbs, of which his own knowledge was singularly inexact, and at the end received his dismissal. In vain he argued. Outraged Minerva was implacable. Go he must.

We find him then, one miserable December evening, standing on the arrival platform of Euston station (the Academy was near Manchester) an unwonted statue of dubiety. At his feet lay his meager valise; in his hand was an enormous bouquet, a useful tribute of esteem from his disconsolate pupils; around him luggage-laden porters and passengers hurried; in front were drawn up the long line of cabs, their drivers! waterproofs glistening with wet; and in his pocket rattled the few paltry coins that, for Heaven knew how long, were to keep him from starvation. Should he commit the extravagance of taking a cab or should he go forth, valise in hand, into the pouring rain? He hesitated.

“''Sacré mille cochons! Quel chien de climat'',” he muttered.

A smart footman, standing by, turned quickly and touched his hat.

“Beg pardon, sir, I'm from Mr. Smith.”

“I'm glad to hear it, my friend,” said Aristide.

“You're the French gentleman from Manchester?”

“Decidedly,” said Aristide.

“Then, sir, Mr. Smith has sent the carriage for you.”

“That's very kind of him,” said Aristide.

The footman picked up the valise and darted down the platform. Aristide followed. The footman held invitingly open the door of a cosy brougham. Aristide paused for the fraction of a second. Who was this hospitable Mr. Smith?”

“Bah!” said he to himself, “the best way of finding out is to go and see.”

He entered the carriage, sank back luxuriously on the soft cushions, and inhaled the warm smell of leather. They started, and soon the pelting rain beat harmlessly against the windows. Aristide looked out at the streaming streets, and hugging himself comfortably thanked Providence and Mr. Smith. But who was Mr. Smith? Tiens, thought he, there were two little Miss Smiths at the Academy; he had pitied them because they had freckles, chilblains and perpetual colds in their heads; possibly this was their kind papa. But after all, what did it matter whose papa he was? He was expecting him. He had sent the carriage for him. Evidently a well-bred and attentive person. And tiens! there was even a hot-water can on the floor of the brougham. “He thinks of everything, that man,” said Aristide. “I feel I am going to like him.”

The carriage stopped at a house in Hamstead standing, as far as he could see in the darkness, in its own grounds. The footman opened the door for him to alight, and escorted him up the front steps. A neat parlor maid received him in a comfortably furnished hall, and took his hat and great-coat and magnificent bouquet.

“Mr. Smith hasn't come back yet from the city, sir; but Miss Christabel is in the drawing-room.”

"Ah!” said Aristide. “Please give me back my bouquet.”

The maid showed him into the drawing-room—a pretty girl of three and twenty rose from a fender seat, and advanced smilingly to meet him.

“Good afternoon, Monsieur le Baron. I was wondering whether Thomas would spot you. I'm so glad he did. You see, neither father nor I could give him any description, for we had never seen you.”

This fitted in with his theory. But why Baron? After al why not? The English loved titles.

"He seems to be an intelligent fellow, mademoiselle.”

There was a span of silence. The girl looked at the bouquet, then at Aristide, who looked at the girl, then at the bouquet, and then at the girl again.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “will you deign to accept these poor flowers as a token of my respectful homage.”

Miss Christabel took the flowers, and blushed prettily. She had dark hair and eyes and a fascinating, upturned, little nose and the kindest little mouth in the world.

“An Englishman would not have thought of that,” she said.

Aristide smiled in his roguish way, and raised a deprecating hand.

"Oh, yes, he would. But he would not have had—what you call the cheek to do it.”

Miss Christabel laughed merrily, invited him to a seat by the fire, and comforted him with tea and hot muffins. The frank charm of his English girl hostess captivated Aristide and drove from his mind the riddle of his adventure. Besides, think of the Arabian Nights! Enchantment of the change from his lonely and shabby bed-sitting room in the Rusholme Road to this fragrant palace with princess and all, to keep him company! He watched the firelight dancing through her hair, the dainty play of laughter over her face and decided that the brougham had transported him to Bagdad instead of Hampstead.

“You have the air of a veritable princess,” said he.

"I once met a princess—at a Charity Bazar—and she was a most matter-of-fact, businesslike person.”

“Bah!” said Aristide. “A princess of a Charity Bazar! I was talking of the princess in a fairy tale. They are the only real ones.”

“Do you know,” said Miss Christabel, “that when men pay such compliments to English girls they are apt to get laughed at.”

“Englishmen, yes,” replied Aristide, “because they think over a compliment for a week, so that by the time they pay it, it is addled, like a bad egg. But we of Provence pay tribute to beauty straight out of our hearts. It is true. It is sincere. And what comes out of the heart is not ridiculous.”

Again the girl colored and laughed. “I've always heard that a Frenchman makes love to every woman he meets.”

“Naturally,” said Aristide. “If they are pretty. What else are pretty women for? Otherwise they might as well be hideous.”

“Oh!” said the girl, to whom this Provençal point of view had not occurred.

“So if I make love to you, it is but your due.”

“I wonder what my fiancé would say if he heard you?”

“Your”

“My fiancé! There's his photograph on the table beside you. He is six foot one, and so jealous” she laughed again.

“The Turk!” cried Aristide, his swiftly conceived romance crumbling into dust. Then he brightened up. “But when this six feet of muscle and egotism is absent, surely other poor devils can glean a smile?”

“You will observe that I'm not frowning,” said Miss Christabel. “But you must not call my fiancé a Turk, for he's a very charming fellow whom I hope you'll like very much.”

Aristide sighed: “And the name of this thrice blessed mortal?”

Miss Christabel told his name—one Harry Ralston—and not only his name, but, such was the peculiar, childlike charm of Aristide Pujol, also many other things about him. He was the Honorable Harry Ralston, the heir to a great brewery peerage and very wealthy. He was a Member of Parliament, and but for parliamentary duties would have dined there that evening; but he was to come in later, as soon as he could leave the House. He also had a house in Hampshire full of the most beautiful works of art. It was through their common hobby that her father and Harry first had made acquaintance.

“Were supposed to have a very fine collection here,” she said, with a motion of her hand.

Aristide looked around the walls, and saw them hung with pictures in gold frames. In those days he had not acquired an extensive culture. Besides, who having before him the firelight gleaming through Miss Christabel's hair could waste his time over painted canvas? She noted his cursory glance.

“I thought you were a connoisseur,” she said.

“I am,” said Aristide, his bright eyes fixed on her in frank admiration.

She blushed again; but this time she rose.

“I must go and dress for dinner. Perhaps you would like to be shown your room.”

He hung his head on one side. “Have I been too bold, mademoiselle?”

“I don't know,” she said. “You see, I've never met a Frenchman before.”

“Then a world of undreamed-of homage is at your feet,” said he.

A servant ushered him up broad carpeted staircases into a bedroom such as he had never seen in his life before. It was all curtains and hangings and rugs and soft couches and satin quilts and dainty writing tables and subdued lights and a great fire glowed red and cheerful, and before it hung a clean shirt. His poor little toilet apparatus was laid out on the dressing table and (with a tact which he did not appreciate, for he had, sad to tell, no dress suit) the servant had spread his precious frock coat and spare pair of trousers on the bed. On the pillow lay his night shirt neatly folded.

“Evidently,” said Aristide, impressed by these preparations, "it is expected that I wash myself now and change my clothes, and that I sleep here for the night. And for all that the ravishing Miss Christabel is engaged to her honorable Harry, this is none the less a corner of paradise.”

So Aristide attired himself in his best, which included a white tie and a pair of nearly new brown boots—a long task, as he found that his valise had been spirited away and its contents, including the white tie of ceremony (he had but one), hidden in unexpected drawers and wardrobes—and eventually went downstairs into the drawing-room. There he found Miss Christabel and, warming himself on the hearth rug, a bald-headed, beefy-faced Briton with little pigs' eyes and a hearty manner, attired in a dinner suit.

“My dear fellow,” said this personage, with outstretched hand, “I'm delighted to have you here. I've heard so much about you; and my little girl has been singing your praises.”

“Mademoiselle is too kind,” said Aristide.

“You must take us as you find us,” said Mr. Smith. “We're just ordinary folk, but I can give you a good bottle of wine and a good cigar—it's only in England, you know, that you can get champagne fit to drink, and cigars fit to smoke—and I can give you a glimpse of a modest English home. I believe you haven't a word for it in French.”

“Ma foi, no,” said Aristide, who had once or twice before heard this lunatic charge brought against his country. “In France the men all live in cafés, the children are all put out to nurse, and the women, saving the respect of mademoiselle, well,—the less said about them the better.”

“England is the only place, isn't it?” Mr. Smith declared heartily. “I don't say that Paris hasn't its points. But after all—the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergères, and that sort of thing soon pall, you know, soon pall.”

“Yet Paris has its serious side,” argued Aristide. “There is always the Tomb of Napoleon.”

“Papa will never take me to Paris,” sighed the girl.

“You shall go there on your honeymoon,” said Mr. Smith.

Dinner was announced. Aristide gave his arm to Miss Christabel, and proud not only of his partner, but also of his frock coat, white tie and shiny brown boots, strutted into the dining room. The host sat at the end of the beautifully set table, his daughter on his right, Aristide on his left. 'The meal began gaily. The kind Mr. Smith was in the best of humors.

“And how is our dear old friend, Jules Dancourt?” he asked.

“Tiens,” said Aristide to himself, “we have a dear friend Jules Dancourt. Wonderfully well,” he replied at a venture, “but he suffers terribly at times from the gout.”

“So do I, confound it!” said Mr. Smith, drinking sherry.

“You and the good Jules were always sympathetic,” said Aristide. 'Ah! he has spoken to me so often about you, the tears in his eyes.”

“Men cry, my dear, in France,” Mr. Smith explained. “They also kiss each other.”

“Ah, mais c'est un beau pays, mademoiselle!” cried Aristide, and he began to talk of France and to draw pictures of his country which set the girl's eyes dancing. After that he told some of the funny little stories which had brought him disaster at the Academy. Mr. Smith with jovial magnanimity declared that he was the first Frenchman he had ever met with a sense of humor.

“But I thought, Baron,” said he, “that you lived all your life shut up in that old château of yours.”

“Tiens!” thought Aristide. “I am still a Baron and I have an old château.”

“Tell jus about the château. Has it a fosse and a drawbridge, and a Gothic chapel?” asked Miss Christabel.

“Which one do you mean?” inquired Aristide airily. “For I have two.”

When relating to me this Arabian Nights' adventure, he plumed himself greatly on his astuteness.

His host's eye quivered in a wink. “The one in Languedoc,” said he.

Languedoc! Almost Pujol's own country! With entire lack of morality but with a picturesque imagination Aristide plunged into a description of that non-existent baronial hall. Fosse, drawbridge, Gothic chapel were but insignificant features. It had tourelles, emblazoned gateways, bastions, donjons, boulevards; it had innumerable rooms; in the salle des chevaliers two hundred men-at-arms had his ancestors fed at a sitting. There was the room in which Francois Premier had slept, and one in which Joan of Arc had almost been assassinated. What the name of himself or of his ancestors was supposed to be, Aristide had no ghost of an idea. But as he proceeded with the erection of his airy palace, he gradually began to believe in it. He invested the place with a living atmosphere; conjured up a staff of family retainers, notably one Marie-Joseph Loufoque the wizened old major-domo, with his long white whiskers and blue and silver livery. There were also Madeline Mioulles, the cook, and Bernadet, the groom, and La Petite Fripette, the goose-girl.... Ah! they should see La Petite Fripette! And he kept dogs, and horses, and cows, and ducks and hens—and there was a great pond whence frogs were drawn to be fed for the consumption of the household.

Miss Christabel shivered. “I should not like to eat frogs.”

“They also eat snails,” said her father.

“I have a snail farm,” said Aristide. “You never saw such interesting little animals. They are so intelligent. If you're kind to them, they come and eat out of your hand.”

“You've forgotten the pictures,” said Mr. Smith.

“Ah! The pictures!” cried Aristide, with a wide sweep of his arm, “galleries full of them. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Wiertz, Reynolds...

He paused not in order to produce the effect of a dramatic aposiopesis, but because he could not for the moment remember other names of painters.

“It is a truly historical château,” said he.

“I should love to see it,” said the girl.

Aristide threw out his arms wide across the table. “It is yours, mademoiselle, for your honeymoon,” said he.

Dinner came to an end. Miss Christabel left the gentlemen to their wine, an excellent port whose English qualities were vaunted by the host. Aristide, full of food and drink and the mellow glories of the castle in Languedoc, and smoking an enormous cigar felt at ease with all the world. He knew he should like the kind Mr. Smith, hospitable though somewhat insular man. He could stay with him for a week—or a month—why not a year?

After coffee and liqueurs had been served, Mr. Smith rose and switched on a powerful electric light at the end of the large room, showing a picture on an easel, covered by a curtain. He beckoned to Aristide to join him and, drawing the curtain, disclosed the picture.

“There!” said he; “isn't it a stunner?”

It was a picture all gray skies, and gray water, and gray feathery trees, and a little man in the foreground wore a red cap.

“It is beautiful, but indeed it is magnificent!” cried Aristide, always impressionable to things of beauty.

“Genuine Corot, isn't it?”

“Without doubt,” said Aristide.

His host poked him in the ribs. “I thought I'd astonish you. You wouldn't believe Gottschalk could have done it. There it is—as large as life, and twice as natural. If you or anyone else can tell it from a genuine Corot I'll eat my hat. And all for eight pounds.”

Aristide looked at the beefy face, and caught a look of cunning in the little pigs' eyes.

“Now are you satisfied?” he asked.

“More than satisfied,” said Aristide, though what he was to be satisfied about passed, for the moment, his comprehension.

“If it was a copy of an existing picture, you know—one might have understood it—that of course would be dangerous—but for a man to go and get bits out of various Corots and stick them together like this is miraculous. If it hadn't been for a matter of business principle, I'd have given the fellow eight guineas instead of pounds—hanged if I wouldn't! He deserves it.”

“He does, indeed,” said Aristide Pujol.

“And now that you've seen it with your own eyes, what do you think you might ask me for it. I suggested something between two and three thousand—shall we say three? You're the owner, you know.” Again the process of rib-digging: “Came out of that historic château of yours. My eye! you're a holy terror when you begin to talk. You almost persuaded me it was real.”

"Tiens!” said Aristide to himself. “I don't seem to have a château after all.”

“Certainly three thousand,” said he with a grave face.

“That young man thinks he knows a lot, but he doesn't,” said Mr. Smith.

“Ah!” said Aristide with singular laconicism.

“Not a blooming thing,” continued his host. “But he'll pay three thousand, which is the principal, isn't it? He's partner in the show, you know, Ralston, Wiggins & Wix's Brewery”—Aristide pricked up his ears—*and when his doddering old father dies, he'll be Lord Ranelagh and come into a million or so.”

“Has he seen the picture?” asked Aristide.

“Oh yes. Regards it as a masterpiece. Didn't Brauneberger tell you of the Lancret we planted on the American?” Mr. Smith rubbed hearty hands at the memory of the iniquity. "Same old game. Always easy. I have nothing to do with the bargaining or the sale. Just an old friend of the ruined French nobleman with the historic château and family treasures. He comes along and fixes the price. I told our friend Harry”

“Good,” thought Aristide. “This is the same Honorable Harry, M. P., who is engaged to the ravishing Miss Christabel.”

“I told him,” said Mr. Smith, “that it might come to three or four thousand. He jibbed a bit—so when I wrote to you, I said two or three. But you might try him with three to begin with.”

Aristide went back to the table and poured himself out a fresh glass of his kind host's 1865 brandy and drank it off.

“Exquisite, my dear fellow,” said he. “I've none finer in my historic château.”

"Don't suppose you have,” grinned the host, joining him. He slapped him on the back. "Well,” said he, with a shifty look in his little pigs' eyes, “let us talk business. What do you think would be your fair commission? You see all the trouble and invention have been mine. What do you say to four hundred pounds?”

“Five,” said Aristide, promptly.

A sudden gleam came into the little pigs' eyes.

“Done!” said Mr. Smith, who had imagined that the other would demand a thousand and was prepared to pay eight hundred. “Done!” said he again.

They shook hands to seal the bargain and drank another glass of old brandy. At that moment a servant, entering, took the host aside.

“Please excuse me a moment,” said he, and went with the servant out of the room.

Aristide left alone, lighted another of his kind host's fat cigars and threw himself into a great leathern armchair by the fire, and surrendered himself deliciously to the soothing charm of the moment. Now and then he laughed, finding a certain comicality in his position. And what a charming father-in-law, this kind Mr. Smith!

His cheerful reflections were soon disturbed by the sudden irruption of his host and a grizzled, elderly, foxy-faced: gentleman with a white mustache, wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in the buttonhole of his overcoat.

“Here you!” cried the kind Mr. Smith striding up to Aristide, with a very red face. “Will you have the kindness to tell me who the devil you are?”

Aristide rose and, putting his hands behind the tails of his frock coat, stood smiling radiantly on the hearth rug. A wit much less alert than my irresponsible friend's would have instantly appreciated the fact that the real Simon Pure had arrived on the scene.

“I, my dear friend,” said he, "am the Baron de Je ne Sais Plus.”

“You're a damned impostor,” spluttered Mr. Smith.

“And this gentleman here to whom I have not had the pleasure of being introduced?” asked Aristide, blandly.

“I am Monsieur Poiron, Monsieur, the agent of, Messrs. Brauneberger & Compagnie, Art dealers of the Rue Notre Dame des Petits Champs of Paris,” said the new-comer with an air of defiance.

“Ah, I thought you were the baron,” said Aristide.

“”here's no blooming baron at all about it!” screamed Mr. Smith. “Are you Poiron, or is he?”

“I would not have a name like Poiron for anything in the world,” said Aristide. “My name is Aristide Pujol, soldier of fortune, at your service.”

“How the blazes did you get here?”

“Your servant asked me if I was a French gentleman from Manchester. I was. He said that Mr. Smith had sent his carriage for me. I thought it hospitable of the kind Mr. Smith. I entered the carriage—et voila!”

“Then clear out of here this very minute,” said Mr. Smith, reaching forward his hand to the bell-push. Aristide checked his impulsive action.

“Pardon me, dear host,” said he. “It is raining dogs and cats outside. I am very comfortable in your luxurious home. J'y suis, j'y reste.”

“I'm shot if you do,” said the kind Mr. Smith, his face growing redder and uglier. “Now will you go out, or will you be thrown out?”

Aristide, who had no desire whatever to be ejected from this snug nest into the welter of the wet and friendless world, puffed at his cigar and looked at his host with the irresistible drollery of his eyes.

“You forget, mon cher ami,” said he, “that neither the beautiful Miss Christabel nor her affianced, the Honorable Harry, M. P., would care to know that the talented Gottschalk got only eight pounds, not even guineas, for painting that three thousand pound picture.”

“So it's blackmail, eh?”

“Precisely,” said Aristide, “and I don't blush at it.”

“You infernal little blackguard!”

“I seem to be in congenial company,” said Aristide. “I don't think our friend Monsieur Poiron has more scruples than he has right to the ribbon of the Legion of Honor which he is wearing.”

“How much will you take to go out? I have a cheque-book handy.”

Mr. Smith moved a few steps from the hearth rug. Aristide sat down in the armchair. An engaging, fantastic impudence was one of the charms of Aristide Pujol.

“I'll take five hundred pounds,” said he, “to stay in.”

“Stay in?” Mr. Smith grew apoplectic.

“Yes,” said Aristide. “You can't do without me. Your daughter and your servants know me as Monsieur le Baron—by the way, what is my name? And where is my historic château in Languedoc?”

“Mireilles,” said Monsieur Poiron, who was sitting grim and taciturn on one of the dining-room chairs. “And the place is the same, near Montpellier.”

“I like to meet an intelligent man,” said Aristide.

“I should like to wring your infernal neck,” said the kind Mr. Smith. “But, by George, if we do let you in you'll have to sign me a receipt implicating yourself up to the hilt. I'm not going to be put into the cart by you, you can bet your life.”

“Anything you like,” said Aristide, “so long as we all swing together.”

Now when Aristide Pujol arrived at this point in his narrative, I, his chronicler, who am nothing if not an eminently respectable, law-abiding Briton, took him warmly to task for his sheer absence of moral sense. His eyes, as they sometimes did, assumed a luminous pathos.

“My dear friend,” said he. “Have you ever faced the world in a foreign country in. December with no character and fifteen pounds five and threepence in your pocket? Five hundred pounds was a fortune. It is one now. And to be gained just by lending oneself to a good farce, which didn't hurt anybody. You and your British morals! Bah!” said he, with a fine flourish.

Aristide, after much parleying, was finally admitted into the nefarious brotherhood. He was to retain his rank as the Baron de Mireilles, and play the part of the pecuniarily inconvenienced nobleman forced to sell some of his rare collection. Mr. Smith had heard of the Corot through their dear old common friend, Jules Dancourt of Rheims, had mentioned it alluringly to the Honorable Harry, had arranged for the Baron who was visiting England to bring it over and despatch it to Mr. Smith's house, and on his return from Manchester to pay a visit to Mr. Smith, so that he could meet the Honorable Harry in person. In whatever transaction ensued, Mr Smith, as far as his prospective son-in-law was concerned, was to be the purely disinterested friend. It was Aristide's wit which invented a part for the supplanted Monsieur Poiron. He should be the eminent Parisian expert who, chancing to be in London, had been telephoned for by the kind Mr. Smith.

“It would not be wise for Monsieur Poiron,” said Aristide, chuckling inwardly with Puckish glee, “to stay here for the night—or for two or three days—or a week—like myself. He must go back to his hotel when the business is concluded.”

“Mais, pardon!” cried Monsieur Poiron, who had been formally invited, and had arrived late solely because he had missed his train at Manchester, and come on by the next one. “I cannot go out into the wet, and I have no hotel to go to.”

Aristide appealed to his host. “But he is unreasonable, cher ami. He must play his rôle. Monsieur Poiron has been telephoned for. He can't possibly stay here. Surely five hundred pounds is worth one little night of discomfort?”

“Five hundred pounds!” exclaimed Monsieur Poiron. “Que'est-ce que vous chantez là? I want more than five hundred pounds.”

“Then you're jolly well not going to get it,” cried Mr. Smith, ina rage. “And as for you”—he turned on Aristide—“I'll wring your infernal neck yet.”

“Calm yourself, calm yourself!” smiled Aristide, who was enjoying himself hugely.

At this moment the door opened and Miss Christabel appeared. On seeing the decorated stranger she stared with a little “Oh!” of surprise.

“I beg your pardon.”

Mr. Smith's angry face wreathed itself in smiles.

“This, my darling, is Monsieur Poiron, the eminent Paris expert who has been good enough to come and give us his opinion on the picture.”

Monsieur Poiron bowed. Aristide advanced.

“Mademoiselle, your appearance is like a mirage in a desert.”

She smiled indulgently and turned to her father. “I've been wondering what had become of you. Harry has been here for the last half hour.”

“Bring him in, dear child, bring him in!” said Mr. Smith, with all the heartiness of the fine old English gentleman.

'The girl flickered out of the room like a sunbeam (the phrase is Aristide's), and the three precious rascals put their heads together in a hurried and earnest colloquy. Presently Miss Christabel returned, and with her came the Honorable Harry Ralston, a tall, soldierly fellow, with close-cropped, fair curly hair and a fair mustache, and frank blue eyes that, even in Parliament, had seen no harm in his fellow creatures. Aristide's magical vision caught him wincing ever so little at Mr. Smith's effusive greeting and overdone introductions. He shook Aristide warmly by the hand.

“You have a beauty there, Baron, a perfect beauty,” said he, with the insane ingenuousness of youth. “I wonder how you can manage to part with it.”

“Ma foi,” said Aristide, “I have so many at the Château de Mireilles. When one begins to collect, you know—and when one's grandfather and father have had also the divine mania”

“You were saying, Monsieur le Baron,” said Poiron, “that your respected grandfather bought this direct from Corot himself.”

“A commission,” said Aristide. “My grandfather was a patron of Corot.”

“Do you like it, dear?” asked the Honorable Harry.

“Oh yes!” replied the girl fervently. “It is beautiful. I feel like Harry about it”—she turned to Aristide—“how can you part with it? Were you really in earnest when you said you would like me to come and see your collection?”

“For me,” said Aristide, “it would be a visit of enchantment.”

“You must take me then,” she whispered to Harry. 'The baron has been telling us about his lovely old château.”

“Will you come, monsieur?” asked Aristide.

“Since I'm going to rob you of your picture,” said the young man, with smiling courtesy, “the least I can do is to pay you a visit of apology.”

Aristide took Miss Christabel, now more bewitching than ever with the glow of young love in her eyes and a flush on her cheek, a step or two aside and whispered:

“But he is charming, your fiancé! He almost deserves his good fortune.”

“Why almost?” she laughed shyly.

“It is not a man, but a demigod that would deserve you, mademoiselle.”

Monsieur Poiron's harsh voice broke out.

“You see, it is painted in the beginning of Corot's later manner—it is 1864—there is the mystery which, when he was quite an old man, became a trick. If you were to put it up to auction at Christie's it would fetch, I am sure, five thousand pounds.”

“That's more than I can afford to give;” said the young man with a laugh. “Mr. Smith mentioned something between three and four thousand pounds. I don't think I can go above three.”

“I have nothing to do with it, my dear boy, nothing whatever,” said Mr. Smith, rubbing his hands. “You wanted a Corot. I said I thought I could put you on to one. It's for the Baron here to mention his price.”

“Well, Baron,” said the young man cheerfully. “What's your idea?”

Aristide came forward and resumed his place at the end of the table. The picture was in front of him beneath the strong electric light; on his left stood Mr. Smith and Poiron, on his right Miss Christabel and the Honorable Harry.

“I'll not take three thousand pounds for it,” said Aristide. “A picture like that! Non, jamais!”

“I assure you it would be a fair price,” said Monsieur Poiron.

“You mentioned that figure yourself, only just now,” said Mr. Smith, with an ugly glitter in his little pigs' eyes.

“I presume, gentlemen,” said Aristide, “that this picture is my own property.” He turned engagingly to his host. “Is it not, cher ami?”

“Of course it is. Who said it wasn't?”

“And you, Monsieur Poiron, acknowledge formally that it is mine?” he asked, in French.

“Sans aucun doute.”

“Eh bien,” said Aristide, throwing open his arms and gazing round sweetly. “I have changed my mind. I do not sell the picture at all.”

“Not sell it? What the—what do you mean?” asked Mr. Smith, striving to mellow the gathering thunder on his brow.

“I do not sell,” said Aristide. “Listen, my dear friends!” He was in the seventh heaven of happiness—the principal man, the star, taking the center of the stage. “I have an announcement to make to you. I have fallen desperately in love with mademoiselle.”

There was a general gasp. Mr. Smith looked at him, red faced and open mouthed. Miss Christabel blushed furiously and emitted a sound half between a laugh and a scream. Harry Ralston's eyes flashed.

“My dear sir—” he began.

“Pardon,” said Aristide, disarming him with the merry splendor of his glance, “I do not wish to take mademoiselle from you. My love is hopeless! But it will feed me to my dying day. In return for the joy of this hopeless passion, I will not sell you the picture—I give it you as a wedding present.”

He stood, with the air of a hero, both arms extended toward the amazed pair of lovers.

“I give it you,” said he. “It is mine. I have no wish but for your happiness. In my château there are a hundred others.”

“This is madness!” said Mr. Smith, bursting with suppressed indignation.

“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Harry Ralston, “it is unheard-of generosity on your part; but we can't accept it.”

“Then,” said Aristide, advancing dramatically to the picture. “I take it under my arm—I put it in a hansom cab, and I go with it back to Languedoc.”

Mr. Smith caught him by the wrist and dragged him out of the room.

“You little brute, do you want your neck broken?”

“Do you want the marriage of your daughter with the rich and Honorable Harry broken?” asked Aristide.

“Oh, damn!” cried Mr. Smith, stamping about helplessly and half weeping. “Oh, damn! Oh, damn! Oh, damn!”

Aristide entered the dining room and beamed on the company.

“The kind Mr. Smith has consented. Monsieur Honorable Harry and Miss Christabel, there is your Corot. And now may I be permitted?” He rang the bell. A servant appeared.

“Some champagne to drink to the health of the fiancés,” he cried. “Lots of champagne.”

Mr. Smith looked at him almost admiringly. “By Jove!” he muttered. “You have got a nerve.”

“Voilà,” said Aristide, when he had finished the story.

“And did they really accept the Corot?” I asked.

“Of course. It is hanging now in the big house in Hampshire. I stayed with the kind Mr. Smith for six weeks,” he added, doubling himself up in his chair and hugging himself with mirth, “and we became very good friends. And I was at the wedding.”

“And what about their honeymoon visit to Languedoc?”

“Alas!” said Aristide. “The morning before the wedding I had a telegram—it was from my old father at Aigues-Mortes—to tell me that the historic Château de Mireilles with my priceless collection of pictures had been burned to the ground.”

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text: Talk:Achilles Goes to Chicago

title: Talk:Achilles Goes to Chicago