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

NE 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 windmill 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-Joséphine; 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 tired 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! Was there ever such 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 seashells. Anyone could have made a mouthful of her.... Ah! Cré 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 now to set down.

The good Monsieur Bocardon of the Hôtel de la Curatterie at Nimes, whose grateful devotion to Aristide has already been recorded in these chronicles, had a brother in Paris who managed the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse (strange conjuncture, a flourishing third-rate hostelry in the neighborhood of the Halles Centrales). Thither flocked sturdy Britons in knickerbockers, stockings and cloth caps, Teutons with tin botanizing boxes (for lunch transportation), and American schoolmarms 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 Monsieur Bocardon of Paris Aristide, one August morning, brought glowing letters of introduction from Monsieur and Madame Bocardon of Nimes. Monsieur Bocardon of Paris welcomed Aristide as a Provençal 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 clientèle. The clientèle of the Hôtel 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. Pouch!” 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 Monsieur Bocardon.

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

“Explain yourself,” said Monsieur Bocardon.

Aristide, letting loose his swift imagination, explained copiously and hypnotized Mon- sieur Bocardon with his glittering eye until he had assured to himself a means of liveli- hood. 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, “Monsieur le Directeur” by the Latins and “Herr Direktor” by the Teutons, walked about like a peacock in a barnyard.

At that period, and until he had learned 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 schoolmarms 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 Provençal 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 honorable profession for about a month, lodging with the good Madame Bidoux at 214 bis rue St. Honoré, 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 Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse, their greetings were fervent and prolonged.

In person Batterby tended toward burliness. He had a red, jolly face, divided unequally by a great black mustache, 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 vermouth sec.

“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. i

“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. Mighty 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 wine glass against the other's tumbler. “Here is to Madame.”

When they returned to the vestibule, they found Mrs. Batterby patiently awaiting her lord. She arose 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, just like the smoke, said Aristide, curling upward 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 said, 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 cafés-concerts in. the Champs Elysées 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 hos- pitality. Once or twice, delicately, he suggested withdrawal from the evening's dissipation.

“But, my good Monsieur 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 Tattarean lighting, the Néant 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 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 infinite caressing actions.

“I ought to let you into a secret, Aristide. This is our honeymoon.”

“Who would have thought it?” said Aristide.

“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. “Monsieur 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,” said 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 Eugénie, the wife of another Napoleon, is still living.”

“Bien sûr,” 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?”

{dhr} 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 neighboring café. 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 shan't be away more than a month. TIl 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 café 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 Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse at nine o'clock the next morning, he found that Batterby had left Paris by the 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, Monsieur Pujol, what can have happened?”

“Nothing at all, chére 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 Aires—eh, que veux-tu, one cannot have letters from those places in twenty-four hours!”

“If only he had taken me with him!”

“But, dear Madame Fleurette, he could not expose you to the hardships of travel. You, who are as fragile as 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, chère 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.

“Monsieur 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 check 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.

“Voilà,” 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 timbré.

“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, Monsieur 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 Saint Paul and Saint Peter are fighting to have next them when she goes to Paradise. Her name is Madame Bidoux, and she sells cabbages and asparagus and charcoal at No. 213 bis rue Saint Honoré. 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 Madame 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 Madame 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 St. Honoré was a little furnished room to let, and there Aristide installed his sacred charge. Madame 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 mirific of God's creatures?—Madame 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 neighbors, of the domestic differences between the concierge and his wife (soothing idyl 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 Monsieur 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. Asa 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.

“Mère Bidoux,” said he, “she must have lots of good, nourishing, tender, underdone beef, good fillets and entrecôtes saignantes.”

Madame Bidoux sighed. She had a heart, but she also had a pocket which, like Aristide's, was not overfilled.

“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 refreshments at cafés essential to the existence of every Frenchman, and degraded his soul by taking half-franc tips from tourists—a source of income which as Direcrector, Monsieur 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 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 Honoré and join with Madame Bidoux in the gossip of neighbors; 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 Madame Bidoux held her sides with mirth. He spent time and thought in elaborating what he called bonnes farces, such as dressing himself up in Madame 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 Madame 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 Madame 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 Madame 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 roller—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 St. Honoré 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.

“Madame 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 Provençal 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. Ry 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 own 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 any 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 Académie 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 Madame Bidoux. She lay on her bed in the little room, ten foot by seven, away, away at the top of the house in the rue Saint Honoré. 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 Hôtel 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....” et cetera, et cetera.

Aristide went up to her room with a great bunch of chrysanthemums. The letter peeped from under the pillow. Fleurette was very weak. Madame 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 charculerie 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 Madame 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 Madame Bidoux and Bocardon and a few neighbors and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the rue Saint Honoré he told Madame 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 Hôtel de Soleil et de l'Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Madame 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 not 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. Mère Bidoux?”

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

“Mére Bidoux,” cried Aristide. “Those letters were sacred!”

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

And, after the first 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....

“If only I had known,” said Aristide.

“What would you have done?” I asked.

“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 gray street. Presently I heard him murmuring the words of the old French song:


text:
The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol (American Magazine series)/The Adventure of the Miracle

RISTIDE, by attaching himself to the Hôtel 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 splendor of existence. Apparently this 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 chivvied 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 Statue of Liberty 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 Tomb of Napoleon.”

At that moment the door of the stuffy salon opened, and a traveling 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,” pointing to the placard. “I am the managing director of the Agence Pujol under the special patronage of this hotel. I undertake all traveling 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.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Ducksmith.

After another solemn inspection of Aristide, he stuck a pair of gold glasses midway 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 gray. His puffy cheeks hung jowl-wise, giving him the appearance of some odd dog—a similarity greatly intensified by the eve 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 gray 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!”

“Flègme 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 gray woolen 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 was at a loss to conjecture. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded bim 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 honor 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 oí 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 mustache, 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 travelers, 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 à 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 color.

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

“And overcharges, 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 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 travelers—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.

“Humph,” 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 vill 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 ('orns, iornic—you see); 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 Ministère 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 beauties of the New Jerusalem 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 lack-luster 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 Aristide's and he was very proud of it) 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 travelers 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 clamor 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 Chancellor of the British 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 offense 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 cafés—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 gray woolen 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 suspice Pujol, on their railway tour through France, to Aristide an Odyssey of unimagined 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, excursionized, 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, was insane. It was a dragonfly personally conducting two moles through a rose garden.

Only once, 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:

“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 honored 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 program? 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-time, 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 Cháteaux 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 traveling 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 Hôtel du Faisan at Tours, Mr. Ducksmith being engaged, as usual, in the salon with his newspapers—“ how much more charming that beautiful gray dress would be if it had a spot of color.”

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 honor to wear it.”

Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.

“I'm afraid my husband does not like color,” 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-honored 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 gray 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 Provençal 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 jellyfish. 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 colored 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. “Batholomew, 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 color 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. Chère 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 saintlike 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 Angouléme, 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 upward 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.”

As Mr. Ducksmith appeared to be entirely unperceptive of his wife's spiritual expansion, Aristide grew bolder in his apostolate. He complimented Mrs. Ducksmith to his face. He presented her daily with flowers. He scarcely waited for the heavy man's back to be turned to make love to her. If she did not believe that she was the most beautiful, the most ravishing, the most delicate-souled woman in the world, it was through no fault of Aristide. Mr. Ducksmith went his pompous, unseeing way. At every stopping place stacks of English daily papers awaited him. Sometimes, while Aristide was showing them the sights of a town, to which, by the way, he insisted on being conducted, he would extract a newspaper from his pocket and read with dull and dogged stupidity. Once Aristide caught him reading the advertisements for cooks and housemaids. In these circumstances Mrs. Ducksmith spiritually expanded at an alarming rate; and in an inverse ratio dwindled the progress of Mr. Ducksmith's sock.

They arrived at Pèrigueux, in Pèrigord, land of truffles, one morning, in time for lunch. Toward the end of the meal the maïtre d'hôtel helped them to great slabs of pâté de foie gras, made in the house—mosj of the hotelkeepers in Périgord make pâté de foie gras both for home consumption and for exportation—and waited expectant of their appreciation. He was not disappointed. Mr. Ducksmith, after a hesitating glance at the first mouthful swallowed it, greedily devoured his slab, and, after pointing to his empty plate, said solemnly:

“Plou.”

Like Oliver he asked for more.

“Tiens!” thought Aristide, astounded, “is he too developing a soul?”

But, alas! there were no signs of it when they went their dreary round of the town in the usual ramshackle open cab. The cathedral of Saint-Front extolled by Aristide and restored by Abadie—a terrible fellow who has capped with tops of pepper castors every pre-Gothic building in France—gave him no thrill; nor did the picturesque, tumble-down ancient buildings on the bank of the Dordogne, nor the delicate Renaissance façades in the cool narrow Rue du Lys.

“We will now go back to the hotel,” said he.

“But have we seen it all?” asked Mrs. Ducksmith.

“By no means,” said Aristide.

“We will go back to the hotel,” repeated her husband in his expressionless tones. “I have seen enough of Pèrigueux.”

This was final. They drove back to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith, without a word, went straight into the salon, leaving Aristide and his wife standing in the vestibule.

“And you, madame,” said Aristide, “are you going to sacrifice the glory of God's sunshine to the manufacture of woolen socks?”

She smiled—she had caught the trick at last—and said in happy submission, 'What would you have me do?”

With one hand he clasped her arm; with the other, in a superb gesture, he indicated the sunlit world outside.

“Let us drain together,” cried he, “the loveliness of Pèrigueux to its dregs!”

Greatly daring, she followed him. It was a rapturous escapade—the first adventure of her life. She turned her comely face to him, and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side chokeful of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers nursing chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches and meeting the mystery of colored glass and shadows and the heavy smell of incense.

Her hand was on his arm when they entered the flagged courtyard of an ancient palace, a stately medley of the centuries, with wrought ironwork in the balconies, tourelles, oriels, exquisite Renaissance ornaments on architraves, and a great central Gothic doorway, with great window openings above, through which was visible the stone staircase of honor leading to the upper floors. In a corner stood a medieval well, the sides curiously carved. One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and gray in shadow. Not a human form or voice troubled the serenity of the spot. On a stone bench against the shady wall Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat down to rest.

“Voilà,” said Aristide. “Here one can suck in all the past like an omelette. They had the feeling for beauty, those old fellows.”

“I have wasted twenty years of my life,” said Mrs. Ducksmith with a sigh. “Why didn't I meet some one like you when I was young? Ah! you don't know what my life has been, Mr. Pujol.”

“Why not Aristide, when we are alone? Why not, Henriette?”

He too had the sense of adventure, and his eyes were more than usually compelling and his voice more seductive. For some reason or other undivined by Aristide, overexcitement of nerves, perhaps, she burst into tears.

“''Henriette! Henriette, ne pleurez pas''.”

His arm crept round her, he knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why—faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson, but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on some one's shoulder and to have some one's sympathetic arm around one's waist.

“Pauvre petite femme—and is it love she is pining for?”

She sobbed; he lifted her chin with his free hand—and what less could moral apostle do?—he kissed her on her wet cheek.

A bellow like that of an angry bull caused them to start asunder. They looked up, and there was Mr. Ducksmith within a few yards of them, his face aflame—his rabbits' eyes on fire with rage. He advanced, shook his fists in their faces.

“I've caught you. At last, after twenty years, I've caught you.”

“Monsieur,” cried Aristide starting up, “allow me to explain.”

He swept Aristide aside like an intercepting willow branch and poured forth a torrent of furious speech upon his wife.

“I have hated you for twenty years. Day by day I have hated you more. I've watched you, watched you, watched you. But, you sly jade, you've been too clever for me till now ... yes! I followed you from the hotel. I dogged you. I foresaw what would happen.... Now the end has come.... I've hated you for twenty years—ever since you first betrayed me”.

Mrs. Ducksmith, who had sat with overwhelmed head in her hands started bolt upright, and looked at him like one thunderstruck.

“I betrayed you?” she gasped in bewilderment. “When? How? What do you mean?”

He laughed—for the first time since Aristide had known him—but it was a ghastly laugh that made the jowls of his cheeks spread horridly to his eats, and again he flooded the calm, stately courtyard with the raging violence of words. The veneer of easy life fell from him. He became the low-born, petty tradesman, using the language of the hands of his jam factory.... No, he had never told her. He had awaited his chance. Now he had found it. He called her names....

Aristide interposed, his Southern being athrob with the insults heaped upon the woman.

“Say that again, monsieur,” he shouted, “and I will take you up in my arms like a sheep and throw you down that well.”

The two men glared at each other, Aristide standing bent, with crooked fingers, ready to spring at the other's throat. The woman threw herself between them.

“For Heaven's sake,” she cried. “Listen to me. I have done no wrong. I have done no wrong now—I never did you wrong. I swear I didn't.”

Mr. Ducksmith laughed again, and his laugh reëchoed round the quiet walls and up the vast staircase of honor.

“You'd be a fool not to say it. But now I've done with you. Here, you, sir. Take her away—do what you like with her—I'll divorce her. I'll give you a thousand pounds never to see her again.”

“''Goujat! Triple goujat!”'' cried Aristide, more incensed than ever at this final insult.

Mrs. Ducksmith, deadly white, swayed sideways, and Aristide caught her in his arms and dragged her to the stone bench. The fat, heavy man looked at them for a second, laughed again and sped through the porte-cochère. Mrs. Ducksmith quickly recovered from her fainting attack and gently pushed the solicitous Aristide away.

“Merciful Heaven!” she murmured, “what is to become of me?”

The last person to answer the question was Aristide. For the first time in his adventurous life resource failed him. He stared at the woman for whom he cared not the snap of a finger and who, he knew, cared not the snap of a finger for him, aghast at the havoc he had wrought. If he had set out to arouse emotion in these two sluggish breasts he had done so with a vengeance. He had thought he was amusing himself with a toy cannon and he had fired a charge of dynamite.

He questioned her almost stupidly—for a man in the comic mask does not readily attune himself to tragedy. She answered with the desolate frankness of a lost soul. And then the whole meaning—or the lack of meaning—of their inanimate lives was revealed to him. Absolute estrangement had followed the birth of their child nearly twenty years ago. The child had died after a few weeks. Since then he saw—and the generous blood of his heart froze as the vision came to him—that the vulgar, half-sentient, rabbit-eyed bloodhound of a man had nursed an unexpressed, dull, undying, implacable resentment against the woman. It did not matter that the man's suspicion was vain—to Aristide the woman's blank amazement at the preposterous charge was proof enough; to the man the thing was real. For nearly twenty years, the man had suffered the cancer to eat away his vitals—and he had watched and watched his blameless wife until, now, at last, he had caught her in this folly. No wonder he could not rest at home; no wonder he was driven Io-wise, on and on, although he hated travel and all its discomforts, knew no word of a foreign language, knew no scrap of history, had no sense of beauty, was utterly ignorant, as every single one of our expensively state-educated English lower classes is, of everything that matters on God's earth; no wonder that, in the unfamiliarity of foreign lands, feeling as helpless as a ballet-dancer in a cavalry charge, he looked to Cook or Lunn or the Agence Pujol to carry him through his uninspired pilgrimage. For twenty years he had shown no sign of joy or sorrow or anger, scarcely even of pleasure or annoyance. A tortoise could not have been more unemotional. The unsuspected volcano had slumbered. To-day came disastrous eruption. And what was a mere laughing, crying child of a man like Aristide Pujol in front of a Ducksmith volcano?

“What is to become of me?” wailed Mrs. Ducksmith again.

“Ma foi~!” said Aristide, with a shrug of his shoulders, “what's going to become of anyone? Who can foretell what will happen in a minute's time? Tiens!” he added, kindly laying his hand on the sobbing woman's shoulder, “be comforted, my poor Henriette. Just as nothing in this world is as good as we hope, so nothing is as bad as we fear. Voyons. All is not lost yet. We must return to the hotel.”

She weepingly acquiesced. They walked through the quiet streets like children whose truancy had been discovered and who were creeping back to condign punishment at school. When they reached the hotel, Mrs. Ducksmith went straight up to the woman's haven, her bedroom.

Aristide tugged at his Vandyck beard in dire perplexity. The situation was too pregnant with tragedy for him to run away and leave the pair to deal with it as best they could. But what was he todo? He sat down in the vestibule and tried to think. The landlord, an unstoppable gramophone of garrulity, entering by the street door and bearing-down upon him, put him to flight. He too sought his bedroom, a cool apartment with a balcony outside the French window. On this balcony, which stretched along the whole range of first-floor bedrooms, he stood for a while, pondering deeply. Then in an absent way he overstepped the limit of his own room frontage; a queer sound startled him; he paused, glanced through the open window, and there he saw a sight which for the moment paralyzed him.

Recovering command of his muscles, he tip-toed his way back. He remembered now that the three rooms adjoined; next to his was Mr. Ducksmith's, and then came Mrs. Ducksmith's. It was Mr. Ducksmith whom he had seen.

Suddenly his dark face became luminous with laughter; his eyes glowed, he threw his hat in the air and danced with glee about the room. Having thus worked off the first intoxication of his idea, he flung his few articles of attire and toilet necessaries into his bag, strapped it, and darted, in his dragon-fly way, into the corridor and tapped softly at Mrs. Ducksmith's door. She opened it, a poor dumpy Niobe, all tears. He put his finger to his lips.

“Madame,” he whispered, bringing to bear on her all the mocking magnetism of his eyes, “if you value your happiness you will do exactly what I tell you. You will obey me implicitly. You must not ask questions. Pack your trunks at once. In ten minutes' time the porter will come for them.”

She looked at him with a scared face. “But what am I going to do?”

“You are going to revenge yourself on your husband.”

“But I don't want to,” she replied piteously.

“I do,” said he. “Begin, chère madame, every moment is precious.”

In a state of stupefied terror the poor woman obeyed him. He saw her start seriously on her task and then went downstairs where he held a violent and gesticulatory conversation with the landlord and with a man in a green baize apron summoned from some dim lair of the hotel.. After that he lighted a cigarette and smoked feverishly, walking up and down the pavement. In ten minutes' time his luggage and that of Mrs. Ducksmith was placed upon the cab. Mrs. Ducksmith appeared trembling and tear-stained in the vestibule.

The man in the green baize apron knocked at Mr. Ducksmith's door and entered the room.

“I have come for the baggage of Monsieur,” said he.

“Baggage? What baggage?” asked Mr. Ducksmith, sitting up.

“I have descended the baggage of Monsieur Pujol,” said the porter in his stumbling English, “and of madame, and put them in a cab, and I naturally thought monsieur was going away too.”

“Going away!” He rubbed his eyes, glared at the porter, and dashed into his wife's room. It was empty. He dashed into Aristide's room. It was empty too. With a roar like that of a wounded elephant he rushed downstairs, the man in the green baize apron following at his heels.

Not a soul was in the vestibule. No cab was at the door. Mr. Ducksmith turned upon his stupefied satellite.

“Where are they?”

“They must have gone already. I filled the cab. Perhaps Monsieur Pujol and madame have gone before to make arrangements.”

“Where have they gone to?”

“In Pèrigueux there is nowhere to go to with baggage but the railway station.”

A decrepit vehicle with a gaudy linen canopy hove in sight. Mr. Ducksmith hailed it as the last victims of the Flood must have hailed the Ark. He sprang into it and drove to the station.

There, in the salle d'attente he found Aristide mounting guard over his wife's luggage. He hurled his immense bulk at his betrayer.

“You blackguard! Where is my wife?”

“Monsieur,” said Aristide, puffing a cigarette, sublimely impudent and debonair, “I decline to answer any questions. Your wife is no longer your wife. You offered me a thousand pounds to take her away. I am taking her away. I did not deign to disturb you for such a trifle as a thousand pounds, but since you are here”

He smiled engagingly and held out his curved palm. Mr. Ducksmith foamed at the corners of the small mouth that disappeared into the bloodhound jowl.

“My wife,” he shouted, “if you don't want me to throw you down and trample on you.”

A band of loungers, railway officials, peasants and other travelers awaiting their trains, gathered round. As the altercation was conducted in English which they did not understand, they could only hope for the commencement of physical hostilities.

“My dear sir,” said Aristide, “I do not understand you. For twenty years you hold an innocent and virtuous woman under an infamous suspicion. She meets a sympathetic soul, and you come across her pouring into his ear the love and despair of a lifetime. You have more suspicion. You tell me you will give me a thousand pounds to go away with her. I take you at your word. And now you want to stamp on me—ma foi, it is not reasonable.”

Mr. Ducksmith seized him by the lapels of his coat. A gasp of expectation went round the crowd. But Aristide recognized an agonized appeal in the eyes now bloodshot.

“My wife,” he said hoarsely. “I want my wife. I can't live without her. Give her back to me. Where is she?”

“You had better search the station,” said Aristide.

The heavy man unconsciously shook him in his powerful grasp as a child might shake a doll.

“Give her to me. Give her to me, I say. She won't regret it.”

“You swear that?” asked Aristide, with lightning quickness.

“I swear it. Where is she?”

Aristide disengaged himself, waved his hand airily toward Pèrigueux and smiled blandly.

“In the salon of the hotel, waiting for you to throw yourself on your knees before her.”

Mr. Ducksmith gripped him by the arm.

“Come back with me. If you're lying, I'll kill you.”

“The luggage?” queried Aristide.

“Damn the luggage!” said Mr. Ducksmith, and dragged him out of the station.

A cab brought them quickly to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith bolted like an obese rabbit into the salon. A few moments afterwards, Aristide, entering, found them locked in each other's arms.

They started alone for England that night, and Aristide returned to the directorship of the Agence Pujol. But he took upon himself enormous credit for having worked a miracle.

“One thing I can't understand,” said I, after he had told me the story with his wealth of gesture and picturesque phrase which I have not ventured to reproduce, “is what put this sham elopement into your crazy head. What did you see when you looked into Mr. Ducksmith's bedroom?”

“Ah, mon vieux, I did not tell you. If I had told you, you would not have been surprised at what I did. I saw a sight that would have melted the heart of a stone. I saw Ducksmith wallowing on his bed and sobbing as if his heart would break. It filled my soul with pity. I said: 'If that mountain of insensibility can weep and sob in such agony,it is because he loves—and it is I, Aristide Pujol, who have reawakened that love.'”

“Then,” said I, “why on earth didn't you go and fetch Mrs. Ducksmith and leave them together?”

He started from his chair and threw up both hands.

“Mon Dieu!” cried he, “you English! You are a charming people, but you have no romance. You have no dramatic sense. I will help myself to a whiskey and soda.”

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