 CHAPTER 1 THE ADVENTURE OF THE FAIR PATRON In narrating these few episodes in the undilaterie, not to say switchback career, of my friend Dharis Didi Pujol, I can pretend to know chronological sequence. Some occurred before he, almost literally, crossed my path for the first time, some afterwards. They have been related to me haphazard at odd times, together with a hundred other incidents, just as a chance tag of association recalled them to his swift and picturesque memory. He would indeed make a show of fixing dates by reference to his temporary profession, but so protean seemed to have been his changes of fortune in their number and rapidity that I could never keep count of them or their order, nor does it matter, the man's life was as disconnected as a pack of cards. My first meeting with him happened in this wise. I had been motoring in a listless, solitary fashion about Languidok. A friend, who had stolen a few days from anxious business in order to accompany me from Boulogne through Tulane and Guyane, had left me at Toulouse. Another friend, whom I had arranged to pick up at Avignon on his way from Monte Carlo, was unexpectedly delayed. I was therefore condemned to a period of solitude somewhat irksome to a man of a gregarious temperament. At first, for company's sake, I sat in front by my chauffeur, McKee. But McKee, an atheistical scotch mechanic with his soul and his cylinders being as communicative as his own differential, I soon relapsed into the equal loneliness and greater comfort of the back. In this fashion I left Montpellier one morning on my leisurely eastward journey, deciding to break off from the main road, striking due south, and visit Agui Morta on the way. Agui Morta was once a flourishing Mediterranean town. Saint-Louis and his crusaders sailed dance twice for Palestine. Charles V and Francis I met there, and filled the place with glittering state. But now its glory has departed. The sea has receded three or four miles, and left it high and dry in the middle of oblique salt marshes, useless, dead and desolate, swept by the howling mistrawl, and scorched by the blazing sun. The straight white ribbon of road which stretched for miles through the plain between dreary vineyards, some underwater, the black shoots of the vines appearing like symmetrical wreckage above the surface, was at last swallowed up by the grim central gateway of the town, surmounted by its frowning tower. On each side spread the brown machioleted battlements that vainly defended the death-stricken place. A soft northern atmosphere would have invested it in a certain mystery of romance, but in the clear southern air the towns and walls standing sharply defined against the blue windswept sky it looked naked and pitiful, like a poor ghost caught in the daylight. At some distance from the gate appeared the usual notice as to speed limit. McKay, most scrupulous of drivers, obeyed. As there was a knot of idlers underneath and beyond the gate he slowed down to a crawl, sounding a patient and monotonous horn. We advanced, the peasant folk cleared the way, sullenly and suspiciously. Then deliberately an elderly man started to cross the road, and on the sound of the horn stood stock still, with resentful defiance on his weather-beaten face. McKay jammed on the brakes. The car halted, but the infinitesimal fraction of a second before it came to a dead stop, the wing over the near front wheel touched the elderly person, and down he went on the ground. I leaped from the car to be instantly surrounded by an infuriated crowd, which seemed to gather from all the quarters of the broad decaying square. The elderly man, helped to his feet by sympathetic hands, shook his knotted fists in my face. He was a doer and ugly peasant of splendid physique, as hard and discoloured as the walls of eggy mort. His cunning eyes were as clear as a voice, his lined, clean-shaven face as rigid as a gargoyle, and the back of his neck, above the low collar of his jersey, showed itself seemed into glazed irregular lozenges like the height of a crocodile. He cursed me and my kind healthily in very bad French, and apostrophised his friends in Provençol, who in Provençol and bad French made responsive clamour. I had knocked him down on purpose, he was crippled for life, who was either go tearing through the peaceful towns with my execrated locomotive and massacring innocent people. I tried to explain that the fault was his, and that, after all, to judge by the strength of his lungs, no great damage had been inflicted. But no, they would not let it go like that. There were the gendarmes. I looked across the square, and saw two gendarmes, riding portentously towards the scene. They would see justice done. The law was there to protect poor folk, for, as certainty, I would not get off easily. I knew what would happen. The gendarmes would dissamequille myself to procé des balles. They would impound the car. I should have to go to the marier and make endless depositions. I should have to wait, heaven knows how long, before I could appear before le juge de paix. I should have to find a solicitor to represent me. In the end I should be fined for a furious driving at the rate when the accident happened of a mile an hour, and probably have to pay a heavy compensation to the willful and uninjured victim of McKeeke's impeccable driving. And all the time, while waiting for injustice to take its course, I should be the guest of a hostile population. I grew angry. The crowd grew angrier. The gendarmes approached with an air of majesty and fate, but just before they could be acquainted with the brutal facts of the disaster, a singularly bright-eyed man wearing a hard-felt hat and a blue-surge suit flashed like a meteor into the midst of the throng, glanced with an amazing swiftness at me, the car, the crowd, the gendarmes and the victim, ran his hands up and down the person of the last mention, and then, with a frenzied action of a figure in a bad cinematograph, rather than that of a human being, subjected the inhabitants to an infuriated phallipic improviseal of which I could not understand one word. The crowd, with here and there a murmur of remonstrance, listened to him in silence. When he had finished, they hung their heads, the gendarmes shrugged their majestic and fateful shoulders and lit cigarettes, and the gargoyle visaged ancient, with the neck of crocodile hide, turned grumbling away. I have never witnessed anything so magical as the effect produced by this electric personage. Even McKee, who during the previous clamour had sat stiff behind his wheel, keeping expressionless eyes, fixed on the cap of the radiator, turned his head two degrees of a circle and glanced at his surroundings. The instant peace was established, our rescuer darted up to me with the directness of a dragonfly, and shook me warmly by the hand. As he had done me a service, I responded with a grateful smile. Besides, his aspect was peculiarly prepossessing. I guessed him to be about five and thirty, he had a clear olive complexion, black moustache, and short silky van dyke beard, and the most fascinating, the most humorous, the most mocking, the most astonishingly bright eyes I have ever seen in my life. I murmured a few expressions of thanks, while he prolonged the handshake with the fervour of a long lost friend. It's all right, my dear sir, don't worry any more, he said, in excellent English, but with a French accent curiously tinged with cockney. The old gentleman says sound as a bell, not a bruise on his body. He pushed me gently to the step of the car. Get in and let me guide you to the only place where you can eat in this accursed town. Before I could recover from my surprise, he was by my side in the car, shouting directions to McKee. Ah, these people, he cried, shaking his hands without spread fingers in front of him. They have no manners, no decency, no self-respect. It's a regular trade. They go and get knocks down by automobiles on purpose, so that they can claim indemnity. They breed dogs especially, and train them to commit suicide under the wheels, so that they can get compensation. There's one now, a sacre bette. He leaned over the side of the car in exchange of violent abjugation with the dog. But, never mind, so long as I am here, you can run over anything you like with impunity. I'm very much obliged to you, said I. You save me from a deal of foolish unpleasantness. From the way you handle the old gentleman, I should guess you to be a doctor. Well, that's one of the few things I've never been, he replied. No, I'm not a doctor. One of these days I'll tell you all about myself. He spoke as if our sudden acquaintance would ripen into lifelong friendship. There's the hotel, the Hotel Saint-Louis. He pointed to a sign a little way up the narrow, old-world, cobble-paved street we were entering. Leave it to me. I'll see that they treat you properly. The car drew up at the doorway. My electric friend leaped out and met the emerging landlady. Bonjour, Madame. I've brought you one of my very good friends, an English gentleman of the most high importance. He will have des gennées, tu s'acquilles à la demeure. None of your cabbage soup and eels, and entouille, but a good omelette, some fresh fish, and a bit of very tender meat. Will that suit you? He asked, turning to me. Excellently, said I, smiling, and since you've ordered me so charming a des gennées, perhaps you'll do me the honour of helping me to eat it. With the very greatest pleasure, said he, without a second's hesitation. He entered the small, stuffy dining-room, where a dingy waiter with a dingier smile showed us to a small table by the window. At the long table in the middle of the room sat the half-dozen frequenters of the house, their napkins tucked under their chins, eating in gloomy silence, a dreary meal of the kind my new friend had deprecated. What shall we drink, I asked, regarding with some disfavor the thin red and white wines in the decanters. Oh, anything, said he, but this piquette du pied, it tastes like a mixture of seawater and vinegar. It produces the look of patient suffering that you see on these gentlemen's faces. You, who are not used to it, had a better not venture. It would exoriate your throat. It would dislocate your pancreas. It would play the very devil with you. Adolf, he beckoned to the waiter, there's a little white wine at a cauldron, he glanced at me. I'm in your hands, said I. As far as eating and drinking went, I could not have been in better. Nor could anyone desire a more entertaining chance companion of travel. That he had thrust himself upon me in the most brazen manner, and taken complete possession of me there could be no doubt. But it all been done in the most irresistibly charming manner in the world. One entirely forgot the impudence of the fellow. I have since discovered that he did not lay himself out to be agreeable. The flow of talk and anecdote, the bright laughter that lit up a little joke, making it appear a very brilliant joke indeed, were all spontaneous. He was a man, too, of some cultivation. He knew France thoroughly, England pretty well. He had a discriminating taste in architecture, and waxed poetical over the beauties of nature. It strikes me as odd, said I, at last, somewhat ironically, that so vital a person as yourself should find scope for your energies in this dead and alive place. He threw up his hands, I live here, I crumble and decay, in a grimoire, for whom do you take me? I replied that not having the pleasure of knowing his name and quality, I could only take him for an enigma. He selected a card from his lettercase, and handed it to me across the table. It bore the legend, Arresti de Pujol, Ajant, 233 Abyss, Rue Saint-Henry, Paris. That address will always find me, he said. Civility bade me give him my card, which he put carefully in his lettercase. I owe my success in life, said he, to the fact that I have never lost an opportunity or a visiting card. Where did you learn your perfect English? I asked. First, said he, among English tourists at Marseille, then in England. I was professor of French at an academy for young ladies. I hope you were a success, said I. He regarded me drolly. Yes, and no, said he. The meal over, we left the hotel. Now, said he, you would like to visit the towers on the ramparts. I would dearly love to accompany you, but I have business in the town. I will take you, however, to the Gadiah, and to put you in his charge. He raced me to the gate by which I had entered. The Gadiah does the lamp-haar, issued from his lodge at Arresti de Pujol's summons, and listened respectfully to his exhortation in Provençal. Then he went for his keys. I'll not say goodbye, Arresti de Pujol, declared Amyville. I'll get through my business long before you've done your sightseeing, and you'll find me waiting for you near the hotel. Au revoir, Jeremy. He smiled, lifted his hat, waved his hand in a friendly way, and darted off across the square. The old Gadiah came out with the keys and took me off to the tour de Constance, where Protestants were imprisoned to Palmele after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Thence to the tour des Bourguignons, where I forget how many hundred Burgundians were massacred and pickled in salt. And after these cheery exhibitions, invited me to walk round the ramparts and inspect the remaining eighteen towers of the enthent. As the Mistral, however, had sprung up and was shattering across the high walls, I declined, and having paid him his fee, to send it to the comparative shelter of the earth. There I found Aristide de Pujol waiting me at the corner of the narrow street in which the hotel was situated. He was wearing, like most of the young bloods of Provence in wintertime, a short, shaggy yet nady goat-skin coat, ornamented with enormous bone buttons, and a little cane valise stood nearby on the curve of the square. He was not alone. Walking arm-and-arm with him was a stout elderly woman of swarthy complexion and forbidding aspect. She was a-tired in a peasant, so-or-small, shopkeepers, rusty, sandy black, and an old-fashioned black bonnet, protigiously adorned with black blooms and black roses. Beneath this bonnet her hair was tightly drawn up from her forehead, heavy eyebrows overhung a pair of small, crafty eyes, and a tuft of hair grew on the corner of a prognathus jaw. She might have been about seven and forty. Aristide de Pujol, unlinking himself from this unattractive female, advanced and saluted me with considerable deference. Monseigneur, said he, as I am neither a duke nor an archbishop, but a humble member of the lower automobile-in-classes, the high-flown title startled me. Monseigneur, will you permit me, said he, in French, to present to you Madame Gugasse. Madame is the patron of the Café des L'Univers at Carcassonne, which, doubtless you have frequented, and she is going to do me the honour of marrying me tomorrow. The unexpectedness of the announcement took my breath away. Good heavens, said I, in a whisper. Anyone less congros as the bride-elect of the debonair Aristide de Pujol, it was impossible to imagine. However, it was none of my business. I raced my hat politely to the lady. Madame, I offer you my sincere felicitations. As an entertaining husband, I am sure you will find Monseigneur Aristide de Pujol without a rival. Je vous remercie, Monseigneur, she replied, in what was obviously her best company manner, and if ever you will deign to come again to the Café des L'Univers at Carcassonne, we will esteem it a great honour. And so you're going to get married tomorrow, I remarked, by way of saying something, to congratulate Aristide de Pujol on his choice, lay beyond my power of hypocrisy. Tomorrow, said he, my dear Amélie, will make me the happiest of men. We start for Carcassonne by the 330 train, said Madame Gugasse, pulling a great silver watch from some fold of her person. Then there is time, said I, pointing to a little weather-beaten café in the square, to drink a glass to your happiness. Bien, bon entier, said the lady. Pardon, cher ami, Aristide de Pujol's quickly, and Monseigneur, and I start at once for Montpellier, I shall not have time to transact my little affairs before your train arrives there. Parenthetically, I must remark that all trains going from Aguemorte to Carcassonne must stop at Montpellier. That's true, she agreed, in a hesitating manner, but idle of my heart, though I am overcome with grief at the idea of leaving you for two little hours, it is a question of four thousand francs. Four thousand francs are not picked up every day in the street, it's a lot of money. Madame Gugasse's little eyes glittered. Bien, c'est, and it's quite settled. Absolutely, and it will be all for me. Ah, said Aristide, you promised all to me for the redecoration of the ceiling of the café. Three thousand will be sufficient, dear angel. What? I know these contractors and decorators. The more you pay them, the more abominable will they make the ceiling. Leave it to me. I, Aristide, will guarantee you a ceiling like that of a sistine chapel for two thousand francs. She smiled and bridled, so as to appear perfectly well-bred in my presence. The act of smiling caused the tuft of hair on her jaw to twitch horribly. A cold shiver ran down my back. Don't you think, Monseigneur, she asked archly, that M. Peugeot should give me the four thousand francs' wedding present. Most certainly said I, in my heartiest voice, entirely mystified by the conversation. Well, I yield, said Aristide. Ah, women, women, they hold up their little rosy finger, and the bravest of men has to lie down with his chin on his paws, like a good old watchdog. You agree, then, Monseigneur, to my giving the whole of the four thousand francs to Amélie? More than that, said I, convinced that this worthy lady of the prognathous jaw was bound to have her own way in the end where money was concerned, and yet, for the life of me, not seeing how I had anything to do with the disposal of Aristide Peugeot's property. More than that, said I, I commend you to do it. C'est bien gentil de votre pas, said madame. And now the café, I suggested, with chattering teeth. We had been standing all the time at the corner of the square, while the mistral whistled down the narrow street. The dust was driven stingingly into our faces, and the women of the place who passed us by held their black scarves over their mouths. Alas, Monseigneur, said madame Gugasa, Aristide is right. You must start now for Montpellier in the automobile. I will go by the train for Carcassonne at three-thirty. It is the only train from Agui Morte. Aristide transacts his business and joins me in the train at Montpellier. You have not much time to spare. I was bewildered. I turn to Aristide Peugeot, who stood, hands on hips, regarding his prospective bride and myself, with humorous benevolence. My good friend, said I in English. I am not the remotest idea of what the two of you were talking about. But I gather you have arranged that I should motor you to Montpellier. Now, I am not going to Montpellier. I have just come from there, as I told you at Dejeuner. I am going in the opposite direction. He took me familiarly by the arm, and with a pardon, j'ariamis, to the lady, led me a few paces aside. I beseech you, he whispered, as a matter of four thousand francs, a hundred and sixty pounds, eight hundred dollars, a new ceiling for the café de l'univers, the dream of a woman's life, and the happiest omen for my wedded felicity. The fair goddess Hyman invites you with uplifted torch. You can't refuse. He hypnotized me with his bright eyes, overpowered my will by his winning personality. He seemed to force me to desire his companionship. I weakened. After all, I reflected, I was at a loose end, and where I went did not matter to anybody. Aristide Pujol had also done me a considerable service, for which I felt grateful. I yielded with good grace. He darted back to Madame Gugas, alive, with gaiety. Cheruby, if you were to press most in your, I'm sure he would come to Carcassonne and dance at our wedding. As that said I, hastily is out of the question, but I added, amused by a humorous idea, why should two lovers separate even for a few hours? Why should not Madame accompany us to Montpellier? There is room in my auto for three, and it will give me the opportunity of making Madame's a better acquaintance. There, Amélie, cried Aristide, what do you say? Truly, it is too much honor, murmured Madame Gugas, evidently tempted. There is your luggage, however, said Aristide. You would bring that great trunk, for which there is no place in the automobile of Montpellier. That's true, my luggage. Send it on by train, Cheruby. When will it arrive at Carcassonne? Not tomorrow, said Pujol, but perhaps next week or the week after. Perhaps it may never come at all. One is never certain with these railway companies, but what does that matter? What do you say? cried the lady sharply. It may arrive, or it may not arrive, but you are rich enough, Cheruby, not to think of a few common souls and bits of jewelry. And my lace and my silk dresses that I have brought to show your parents, messy, she retorted, with a dangerous spark in her little eyes. You think one is made of money, eh? You will soon find yourself mistaken, my friend. I would give you to understand. She checked herself suddenly. Montpellier, she turned to me with a resumption of the gracious manner of her bottle-decked counter at the café de l'univers. You are too amiable. I appreciate your offer infinitely, but I am not going to entrust my luggage to the kind care of the railway company. Messy, no! They are robbers and thieves. Even if it did arrive, half the things would be stolen. Oh, I know them! She shook the head of an experienced and self-reliant woman. No doubt, distrustful of banks as of railway companies, she kept her money hidden in her bedroom. I pitted to my poor young friend. He would need all his gaiety to enliven the domestic side of the café de l'univers. The lady, having declined my invitation, I expressed my regret, and Aristiti, more emotional, voiced his sense of heart-rent desolation, and in a resigned tone informed me that it was time to start. I left the lovers and went to the hotel where I paid the bill, summoned McKee, and lit a companionable pipe. The car backed down the narrow street into the square and took up its position. We entered. McKee took charge of Aristiti's valise, tucked us up in the rug, and settled himself in his seat. The car started, and we drove off. Aristiti gallantly, brandishing his hat and Madame Gugasse waving her lily hand, which happened to be hidden in an ill-fitting black glove. To Montpellier, as fast as you can, he shouted at the top of his lungs to McKee. Then he sighed as he threw himself luxuriously back. This is better than a train. Amelie doesn't know what a mistake she has made. The elderly victim of my furious entry was lounging, in spite of the mistral, by the grim Marchioleta gateway. Instead of scowling at me, he raised his hat respectfully as we passed. I touched my cap, but Aristiti returned the salute with a grave politeness of royalty. This is a place, said he, which I would like never to be old again. In a few moments we were whirling along the straight white road between the interminable black vineyards and past the dilapidated homesteads of the vinefolk and wayside cafes that are scattered about this unjoyous corner of France. Well, he said suddenly, what do you think of my fiancé? Politeness and good taste for bad expression of my real opinion. I murmured platitudes to the effect that she seemed to be a most sensible woman with a head for business. She's not what we in French call jolie, jolie, but what of that? What's the good of marrying a pretty face for other men to make love to? And as you English say, there's none of your confounded sentiment about her. But she has the most flourishing cafe in Carcassonne, and when the ceiling is newly decorated, provided she doesn't insist on too much gold leaf and too many naked babies on clouds, it's astonishing how women love naked babies on clouds. It will be the snuggest place in the world. May I ask for one of your excellent cigarettes? I handed him the case from the pocket of the car. It was there that I made her acquaintance. He resumed, after having lit the cigarette from my pipe. We met, we talked, we fixed it up. She is not the woman to go by four roads to a thing. She did to me the honor of going straight for me. Ah, but what a wonderful woman. She rules that cafe like a kingdom. Esmerales, a queen, Elizabeth, a Catherine de Medici. She sits enthroned behind the counter all day long and takes the money and counts the saucers and smiles on rich clients, and if a waiter in a far corner gives a bit of sugar to a dog, she spots it, and the waiter has a deuce of a time. That woman is worth her weight and thousand franc notes. She goes to bed every night at one and gets up in the morning at five, and virtuous. Didn't Solomon say that a virtuous woman was more precious than Ruby's? That's the kind of wife the wise man chooses when he gives up the giddy ways of youth. Ah, my dear sir, over and over again these last two or three days my dear old parents, I have been on a visit to them at Aguimuata, have commended my wisdom family, who is devoted to me, left her cafe in Carcassonne to make their acquaintance and receive their blessing before our marriage, and also to show them the lace on her dessous and her new silk dress. They are too old to take the long journey to Carcassonne. My son, they said, you are making a marriage after our own hearts. We are proud of you. Now we can die perfectly content. I was wrong, perhaps, in saying that Amelie has no sentiment he continued after a short pause. She adores me. It is evident. She will not allow me out of her sight. Ah, my dear friend, you don't know what a happy man I am. For a brilliant young man of five and thirty who was about to marry a horrible mahiara, ten or twelve years his senior, he looked unhealthily happy. There was no doubt that his handsome roguery had caught the woman's fancy. She was at the dangerous age when even the most pharaoh-concrete nature of women are apt to run riot. She was comprehensible and pardonable. But the man baffled me. He was obviously marrying her for her money. But how, in the name of diogenes and all the cynics, could he manage to look so confoundedly joyful about it? The mistral blew bitterly. I snuggled beneath a rug and hunched up my shoulders so as to get my ears protected by my coat collar. Our SDD is sufficiently protected by his goat's hide, talked like a shepherd on a May morning. Why he took for granted my interest in his unromantic, not to say sordid, courtship, I knew not. But he gave me the whole history of it from its modest beginnings to its now penultimate stage. From what I could make out, for the mistral, whirled many of his words away over unheeding provance, he had entered the café de l'univers one evening, a human derelict battered by buffeting waves of fortune, and, finding a seat immediately beneath Madame Gugasse's comptois, had straightway poured his grievances into a feminine ear, and, figuratively speaking, rested his weary heart upon a feminine bosom. And his buffettings and grievances and wearinesses? Whence came they? I asked the question, point blank. My dear friend, he answered, kissing his gloved fingertips, she was adorable. Who, I ask, taken about Madame Gugasse? Mon Dieu, no, he replied, not Madame Gugasse. Amelie is solid, she is virtuous, she is jealous, she is capacious. But I should not call her adorable. No, the adorable one was twenty, delicious and English, a peach blossom, a zephyr, a summer night's dream, the most provoking little witch you ever saw in your life. Her father and herself, and six of her compatriots, were touring through France. They had circular tickets, so had I. In fact, I was a miniature Thomas Cook and son to the party. I provided them with the discomforts of travel, and supplied erroneous information. If people ask you for the history of a pair of Louis Gann's succorsets in a museum glass case, it's much better to stimulate their imagination by saying that they were worn by Joan of Arc at the Battle of Auge-en-Court, than to dull their minds by your ignorance. Népia, we go through the château of the Loire, through Poitiers, and Anguilhem, and we come to Carcasson. You know Carcasson? The great grim z'été, with its battlements and bastions and barbecans, and fifty towers on the hill, looking over the rubbishy modern town. We were there. The rest of the party were buying picture postcards of the Gartien at the foot of the Tour de l'Inquistienne. The man who invented picture postcards ought to have his statue on the top of the Eiffel Tower. The millions of headaches he has saved. People go to places now, not to exhaust themselves by seeing them, but to buy picture postcards of them. The rest of the party, as I said, were deep in picture postcards. Mademoiselle and I promenaded outside. We often promenaded outside when the others were buying picture postcards, he remarked, with an extra twinkle in his bright eyes. And the result? Was it my fault? He leaned over the parapet. The wind blew a confounded mech. What do you call it? Strand? Yes, Strand of her hair across her face. She let it blow and laughed and did not move. Didn't I say she was a little witch? If there's a proven soul ever born who would not have kissed a girl under such provocation, I should like to have his mummy. I kissed her. She kept on laughing. I kissed her again. I kissed her four times. At the beginning of the fourth kiss out came her father from the postcard shop. He waited till the end of it and then announced himself. He announced himself in such ungentlemanly terms that I was forced to let the whole party, including the adorable little witch, go on to pull by themselves while I betook my broken heart to the café de l'univers. And there you found consolation. I told my sad tale. Emily listened and called the manager to take charge of the comptois and poured herself out a glass of front and young. Emily always drinks front and young when her heart is touched. I came the next day and the next. It was pouring with rain day and night and Carcassonne and rain is like Hades with its furnaces put out by human tears. And the café de l'univers, like a little warm corner of paradise, stuck in the midst of it. And so that's how it happened. That's how it happened. When a lady asked a gal at home to marry her, what is he to do? Besides, did I not say that the café de l'univers was the most prosperous one in Carcassonne? I'm afraid you English, my dear friend, have such sentimental ideas about marriage. Now, we in France attendez, attendez! He suddenly broke off his story, lurched forward and gripped the back of the front seat. To the right, man, to the right! He cried excitedly to Mickey. We had reached the point where the straight road from Agri Mort branches into a fork, one road going to Montpellier, the other to Nîmes. Montpellier being to the west, Mickey had naturally taken the left fork. To the right shouted Aristite. Mickey pulled up and turned his head with the look of protesting inquiry. I intervened with a laugh. You're wrong in your geography, Monsieur Pujol. Besides, there is the sign close, staring you in the face. This is the way to Montpellier. But, my dear heaven-sent friend, I no more want to go to Montpellier than you do, he cried. Montpellier is the last place on earth I desire to visit. You want to go to Nîmes, and so do I. To the right, chauffeur. What shall I do, sir? asked Mickey. I was utterly bewildered. I turned to the goatskin clad, pointed beard, bright-eyed Aristite, who, sitting bolt upright in the car with his hands stretched out, looked like a parody of the god Pan in a hard-felt hat. You don't want to go to Montpellier, I asked stupidly. No, ten thousand times no, not for a king's ransom. But you're four thousand francs. You're meeting Madame Goukasse's drain. You're getting on to Carcassonne. If I could put twenty million continents between myself and Carcassonne, I'd do it. He explained with frantic gestures, don't you understand? The good Lord, who is always on my side, sent you especially to deliver me out of the hands of that unspeakable xanthropy. There are no four thousand francs. I'm not going to meet her drain at Montpellier. And if she marries anyone tomorrow at Carcassonne, it will not be Aristite de Pugior. I shrugged my shoulders. We'll go to Nîmes. Very good, sir, said Mickey. And now, said I, as soon as we had started on the right hand road, will you have the kindness to explain? There's nothing to explain, he cried gleefully. Here am I delivered. I am free. I can breathe God's good air again. I'm not going to marry yum-yum-yum-yum. I feel ten years younger. Oh, I've had a narrow escape. But that's the way with me. I always follow my feet. Didn't I tell you I've never lost an opportunity? The moment I saw an Englishman in difficulties, I realized my opportunity of being delivered out of the house of bondage. I took it, and here I am. For two days I had been racking my brains for a means of getting out of Egimotcha, when suddenly you, a deus ex machina, a veritable god out of the machine, came to my aid. Don't say there isn't a providence watching over me. I suggested that his mode of escape seemed to somewhat elaborate and fantastic. Why couldn't he have slipped quietly round to the railway station and taken a ticket to any haven of refuge he might have fancied? For the simple reason, said he with a gay lap, that I haven't a single penny-piece in the world. He looked so prosperous and untroubled that I stared incredulously. Not one tiny bronze suit, said he. Oh, you seem to take it pretty philosophically, said I. You're the first person who has made me believe in the happiness of beggars. In time I shall make you believe in lots of things, he retorted. No, I hadn't one suit to buy a ticket, and Amelie never left me. I spent my last franc on the journey from Carcassonne to Égimote. Amelie insisted on accompanying me. She was taking no chances. Her eyes never left me from the time we started. When I ran to your assistant, she was watching me from my house on the other side of the plaza. She came to the hotel while we were lunching. I thought I would slip away unnoticed and join you after you had made the tour de l'ampleur. But no, I must present her to my English friend. And then, boyon, didn't I tell you I never lost a visiting card? Look at this. He dived into his pocket, produced the lettercase, and extracted a card. Voilà, I read, The Duke of Wiltshire. But, good heavens, man, I cried. That's not the card I gave you. Well, no, it isn't, said he, but it's someone I show to Amelie. How on earth, I asked, did you come by the Duke of Wiltshire's visiting card? He looked at me roguishly. I am, what do you call it, a snapper up of unconsidered trifles. You see, I know my Shakespeare. I read The Winter's Tale with some French pupils to whom I was teaching English. I love Autolacus. C'est un peu moi, eh? Anyhow, I showed the Duke's card to Amelie. I began to understand. That's why she called me Monseigneur. Naturally, and I told her that you were my English patron, and would give me 4,000 francs as a wedding present if I accompanied you to your agents at Montpellier, where you could draw the money. But she was suspicious. Yesterday I borrowed a bicycle. A friend left it in the courtyard. I thought I would creep out at dead of night when everyone's asleep, and once on my petite bicycle that Monseoir la compagnie. But would you believe it, when I got dressed and crept down and tried to mount the bicycle, I found both tires had been punctured in the hundred places with the point of a pair of scissors. What do you think of that? It has been a narrow escape. When you invited her to accompany us to Montpellier, my heart was in my mouth. It would assert to right, I said, if she had accepted. He laughed as though, instead of not having a penny, he had not a care in the world. A custom to the geometrical conduct of my well-fed fellow Britons, who map out their lives by rule and line, I had no measure whereby to gauge this amazing and inconsequential person. In one way he had acted abominably. To leave an affianced bride in the lurch in this heartless manner was the most un-gentlemanly proceeding. On the other hand an unscrupulous adventurer would have married the woman for her money and chanced the consequences. In the tussle between Perseus and the Gorgon, the odds are all in favour of Perseus. Mercury and Minerva, the most sharp-witted of the gods, are helping him all the time, to say nothing of the fact that Perseus starts out by being a notoriously handsome fellow. So a handsome rogue can generally wheedle an elderly ugly wife into opening her money-bags and, if successful, leads the enviable life of a fighting cock. It was very much to his credit that this kind of life was not to the liking of Aristide de Peugeot. Indeed, speaking from affectionate knowledge of the man, I can declare that the position in which he, like many a better man, had placed himself was intolerable. Other men of equal sensitiveness would have extricated themselves in a more commonplace fashion. But the dramatic appeal to my rascal and he has often bloomed himself on his calculated good at Yatra at the Fork of the Roads. He was delighted with it. Even now I sometimes think that Aristide de Peugeot will never grow up. There's one thing I don't understand, said I, and that is your astonishing influence over the populace at Agri-Motta. You came upon them like a firework, a devil among the tailors, and everybody, Jean Dom and victim included, became as tame as sheep. How was it? He laughed. I said you were my very old and dear friend and patron, a great English duke. I don't quite see how that explanation satisfied the pig-headed old gentleman whom I knocked down. Oh, that, said Aristide de Peugeot, with a look of indescribable drollery. That was my old father. End of chapter one. Chapter two of The Joyous Adventures of Aristide de Peugeot by William John Locke. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter two, The Adventure of the Elysian. Aristide de Peugeot bade me a sunny farewell at the door of the Hotel du Luxembourg at Nîme, and Belize-en-Hain darted off in his impetuous fashion across the Place de l'Esternade. I felt something like a pang at the sight of his retreating figure, as on his own confession he had not a penny in the world. I wondered what he would do for food and lodging, to say nothing of tobacco, about thieves, and other necessaries of life. The idea of so gay a creature starving was abhorrent, yet an invitation to stay as my guest at the Hotel until he saw an opportunity of improving his financial situation he had courteously declined. Early next morning I found him awaiting me in the lounge and smoking an excellent cigar. He explained that so dear a friend as myself ought to be the first to hear the glad tidings. Last evening, by the grace of heaven, he had run across a bear acquaintance, a manufacturer of Nougat at Monttédé Marre, had spent several hours in his company with the result that he had convinced him of two things. First, that the dry, crumbling, shortbread-like Nougat of Monttédé Marre was unknown in England, where the population subsisted on a sickly glutinous mess, where too the medical faculty had described the prevalent dyspepsia of the population. And secondly, that the one heaven-certified apostle who could spread the glorious gospel of Monttédé Marre Nougat over the length and breadth of Great Britain and Ireland was, himself, Aristide Pujol. A handsome salary had been arranged, of which he had already drawn something on account, inquili colalado. And he was to accompany his principal the next day to Monttédé Marre en route for the conquest of Britain. In the meantime he was as free as the winds and would devote the day to showing me the wonders of the town. I congratulated him on his almost fantastic good fortune and gladly accepted his offer. There is one thing I should like to ask you, said I, and it is this. Yesterday afternoon you refused my cordially offered hospitality and went away without a sue to bless yourself with. What did you do? I ask out of curiosity. How does a man set about prying to subsist on nothing at all? It's very simple, he replied. Haven't I told you and haven't you seen for yourself that I never lose an opportunity? More than that, it has been my rule in life either to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. He's a muddle-headed ass, his mammon, and you can steer clear of his unrighteousness, if you're sharp enough, or else to cast my bread upon the waters in the certainty of finding it again after many days. In the case in question, I took the latter course, I cast my bread a year or two ago upon the waters of the Roman baths, which I will have the pleasure of showing you this morning, and I found it again last night at the Hotel de la Coraterie. In the course of the day he related to me the following artless history. Aristide Pujol arrived at Nîme of one blazing day in July. He had money in his pocket and laughter in his soul. He had also deposited his valise at the Hotel du Luxembourg, which, as all the world knows, is the most luxurious hotel in the town. Joyousness of heart impelled him to a course of action which the good Nîmois, regard as maniacal in this weltering July heat, he walked about the baking streets for his own good pleasure. Aristide Pujol was floating a company, a process which afforded him as much delirious joy as the floating, for the first time, of a toy yacht affords a child. It was a company to build a hotel in Perpignan, where the recent demolition of the fortifications erected by the Emperor Charles V had set free a vast expanse of valuable building-ground on the other side of the little river on which the old town is situated. The best hotel in Perpignan, being one to get away from, as soon as possible, owing to restriction of sight, Aristide conceived the idea of building a spacious and palatial hostelry in the new part of town, which should allure all the motorists and tourists of the globe to that Pyrenean paradise. By sheer audacity, he had contrived to interest an imminent Paris architect in his project. Now the man who listened to Aristide Pujol was lost. With the glittering eye of the ancient mariner, he combined the winning charm of a woman. For salvation, you either had to refuse to see him, as all the architects to the end of the oars in the alphabetical list had done, or put wax, Ulysses-like, in your ears, a precaution neglected by the eminent M. Se. M. Se went to Perpignan and returned in a state of subdued enthusiasm. A limited company was formed, of which Aristide Pujol, a man of vast experience in affairs, was managing director. But money came in slowly. The financier was needed. Aristide looked through his collection of visiting cards, and therein discovered that of a deaf iron master at Saint-Étienne, whose life he had once saved at a railway station by dragging him, as he was crossing the line, out of the way of an express train that came thundering through. Aristide, a man of impulse, went straight to Saint-Étienne to work upon the iron master's sense of gratitude. Meanwhile, M. Se, a man of more sober outlook, bethought him of a client, an American millionaire, passing through Paris, who had speculated considerably in hotels. The millionaire, having competence in the eminent M. Se, thought well of the scheme. He was just off to Japan, but would drop down to the Pyrenees the next day, and look at the Perpignan site before boarding his steamer at Marseille. If his inquiry satisfied him, and he could arrange matters with the managing director, he would not mind putting a million dollars or so into the concern. You must kindly remember that I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of everything told me by Aristide Pujol. The question of the all-important meeting between the millionaire and the managing director then arose. As Aristide was at Saint-Étienne, it was arranged that they should meet at a halfway stage on the latter's journey from Perpignan to Marseille. The hotel du Luxembourg at Nîmes was the place, and two o'clock on Thursday the time appointed. Meantime Aristide had found that the deaf iron master had died months ago. This was a disappointment, but fortune compensated him. This part of his adventure is somewhat vague, but I gathered that he was lured by a newly made acquaintance into a gambling den, where he won the prodigious sum of two thousand francs. With this wealth jingling and crinkling in his pockets, he fled the town and arrived at Nîmes on Wednesday morning, a day before his appointment. That is why he walked joyously about the blazing streets. The tide had turned at last. Of the success of his interview with the millionaire, he had not the slightest doubt. He walked about building gorgeous castles in Perpignan, which, by the way, is not very far from Spain. Besides, as you shall hear later, he had an account to settle with the town of Perpignan. At last he reached the Jardin de la Fontaine, the great stately garden laid out in complexity of terrace and bridge, and ballast-rated parapet over the waters of the old Roman baths, by the master hand to which Louis XIV had entrusted the garden of Versailles. Aristide threw himself on a bench and fanned himself with his straw hat. Mon Dieu, it's hot! he remarked to another occupant of the seat. This was a woman, and as he saw when she turned her face towards him, an exceedingly handsome woman. Her white lawn and black silk headdress, coming to a tiny crown, just covering the parting of her full wavy hair, proclaimed her of the neighboring town of Arles. She had all the Arlesians, Roman beauty, the finely chiseled features, the calm straight brows, the ripe lips, the soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes, but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment, then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. He drew nearer. Why, you're crying, madame, said he. Evidently, a murmured the lady. To cry scalding tears in this weather, it's too hot. Now, if you could only cry iced water, there would be something refreshing in it. You just, Monsieur, said the lady, drying her eyes. By no means, said he, the sight of so beautiful a woman in distress, is painful. Ah, she sighed. I am very unhappy. Aristide drew nearer still. Who, said he, is the wretch that has dared to make you so? My husband, replied the lady, swallowing a sob. Thus, counterel, said Aristide. The lady shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her wedding ring, which gleaned in a slim, brown, perfectly capped hand. Aristide prided himself on being a connoisseur in hands. There never was a husband yet, he added, who appreciated a beautiful wife. Husbands only deserve heredence. That's true, said the Arlesienne, for when the wife is good-looking, they are jealous. Ah, that is the trouble, is it, said Aristide. Tell me about it. The beautiful Arlesienne again contemplated her cylinder fingers. I don't know you, monsieur. But you soon will, said Aristide, in his pleasant voice, and with a laughing, challenging glance in his bright eyes. She met it swiftly and at side long. Monsieur, she said, I have been married to my husband for four years and have always been faithful to him. That's praiseworthy, said Aristide, and I love him very much. That's unfortunate, said Aristide. Unfortunate, evidently, said Aristide. Their eyes met. They burst out laughing. The lady quickly recovered and the tears sprang again. One can't jest with a heavy heart and mine is very heavy. She broke down through self-pity. Oh, I am ashamed, she cried. She turned away from him, burying her face in her hands. Her dress cut low, showed the nape of her neck, as it rose gracefully from her shoulders. Two little curls had rebelled against being drawn up with the rest of her hair. The back of a dainty ear set close to the head, was provoking in its pink loveliness. Her attitude, bad of a youthful myopia, all tears, but at the same time all curves and delicious contours, would have played the deuce with an anchor right. Aristide, I would have you remember, was a child of the south. A child of the north, regarding a bewitching woman, thinks how nice it would be to make love to her and waste his time in wondering how he can do it. A child of the south neither thinks nor wonders. He makes love straight away. Madame, said Aristide, you are adorable. I love you to distraction. She started up, Miss Sure, you forget yourself. If I remember anything else in the world about you, it would be a poor compliment. I forget everything. You turn my head, you ravish my heart, and you put joy into my soul. He meant it intensely, for the moment, I ought not to listen to you, said the lady, especially when I am so unhappy, and all the more reason to seek consolation, replied Aristide. Miss Sure, she said after a short pause, you look good and loyal. I will tell you what is the matter. My husband accuses me wrongfully, although I know that appearances are against me. He only allows me in the house on sufferance, and is taking measures to procure a divorce. Ah la bonheur, cried Aristide excitedly, casting away his straw hat, which an unintentional twist of the wrist caused to skim horizontally, and nearly decapitate a small and perspiring soldier who happened to pass by. Ah la bonheur, let him divorce you. You are then free. You can be mine without any further question. But I love my husband, she smiles sadly, bah, said he, with the skepticism of the lover and the provence hall, and by the way, who is your husband? He is Monsieur Emile Boccadon, proprietor of the Hotel de la Cléroterie. And you? I am Madame Boccadon, she replied, with the faintest touch of roguery. But your Christian name, how is it possible for me to think of you as Madame Boccadon? They argued the question. Eventually she confessed to the name of Zett. Her confidence, not stopping there, she told him how she came by the name, how she was brought up by her Aunt Léonée in Ravel, some five miles from Arles, and many other unexciting particulars of her early years. Her baptismal name was Louise, her mother, who died when she was young, called her Louise Zett. Aunt Léonée, a very busy woman, with no time for superfluous syllables, called her Zett. Zett! He cast up his eyes as if she had been canonized, and he was invoking her in rapt worship. Zett, I adore you! Zett was extremely sorry. She, on her side, adored the cruel Emile Boccadon. Incidentally, she learned how to stick his name and quality. He was an agent d'affaires, extremely rich, had he not, two thousand francs, and an American millionaire in his pocket. Monsieur Pujol, she said, the earth holds but one thing that I desire, the love and trust of my husband. The good Boccadon is becoming tiresome, said Aristide. Zett's lips parted as she pointed to a black speck at the iron entrance gate. Mon Dieu, there he is! He has become tiresome, said Aristide. She rose, displaying to its full advantage her supple and stately figure. She had a queenly poise of the head. Aristide contemplated her with the frankest admiration. One would say Junot was walking the earth again. Although Zett had never heard of Junot, and was as miserable and heavy-hearted a woman, as dwelt in neem, a flush of pleasure rose to her cheeks. She, too, was a child of the South, and female children of the South loved to be admired, no matter how frankly. I have heard of Daughters of the Snows, not quite averse to it. She sighed. I must go now, Monsieur. He must not find me here with you. I am suffering enough already from his reproaches. Ah! it is unjust! Unjust! she cried, clenching her hands, while the tears again started into her eyes, and the corners of her pretty lips twitched with pain. Indeed, she added, I know it has been wrong of me to talk to you like this, but, que voulez vous, it was not my fault, adieu, Monsieur. At the sight of her standing before him in her woeful beauty, Aristide's pulses throbbed. It is not adieu, it is au voie, madame Zett, he cried. She protested tearfully. It was farewell. Aristide darted to his rejected hat, and clapped it on the back of his head. He joined her and swore that he would see her again. It was not Aristide de Pujol who would allow her to be rent in pieces by the jaws of that crocodile, Monsieur Bocodon. Faith, he would defend her to the last drop of his blood. He would do all manner of gaskinating things. But what can you do, my poor Monsieur Pujol, she asked. You will see, he replied. They parted. He watched her until she became a speck, and, having joined the other speck, her husband, passed out of sight. Then he set out through the burning gardens toward the Hôtel du Luxembourg, at the other end of the town. Aristide had fallen in love. He had fallen in love with Provenceau-Fury. He had done the same thing a hundred times before, but this, he told himself, was the coup d'Authoudre, the thunderbolt. The beautiful Arlesiam filled his brain and his senses. Nothing else in the wide world mattered. Nothing else in the wide world occupied his mind. He sped through the hot streets like a meteor in human form. A stout man, sipping syrup and water in the cool, beneath the awning of the Café de la Buse, rose, looked wonderfully after him, and resumed his seat, wiping a perspiring brow. A short while afterwards, Aristide, Valise and Anne, presented himself at the bureau of the Hôtel de la Coraterie. It was a shabby little hotel, with a shabby little oval sign outside, and was situated in the narrow street of the same name. Within it was clean and well kept. On the right of the little dark entrance hall was the Salé-Manger. On the left, the bureau, and an unintising hall, labeled Salant de Correspondance. A very narrow passage led to the kitchen, and the rest of the hall was blocked by the staircase. An enormous man, with a simple woe-begone fat face, and a head of hair like a circular machine brush, was sitting by the bureau window in his shirt sleeves. Aristide addressed him. Monsieur Bocodon, at your service, monsieur, can I have a bedroom? Certainly. He waved a hand towards a set of black sample boxes, studded with brass nails, and bound with straps that lay in the hall. The omnibus has brought your boxes. You are Monsieur Lambert? Monsieur Bocodon said Aristide in a lordly way. I am a Monsieur Aristide Peugeot, and not a commercial traveller. I have come to see the beauties of Nîmes, and have chosen this hotel, because I have the honour to be a distant relation of your wife, Madame Zet Bocodon, whom I have not seen for many years. How is she? Her health is very good, replied Monsieur Bocodon shortly. He rang a bell. A dilapidated man in a green-base apron emerged from the dining room, and took Aristides Valise. Number 24, said the Monsieur Bocodon. Then, swinging his massive form halfway through the narrow bureau door, he called down the passage. Ephémy, a woman's voice, responded, and in a moment the woman herself appeared. A pallid haggard, though more youthful, replica of Zet, with the dark rings of sleeplessness or illness beneath her eyes, which looked furtively at the world. Tell your sister, said Monsieur Bocodon, that a relation of yours has come to stay at the hotel. He swung himself back into the bureau, and took no further notice of the guest. A relation echoed Ephémy, staring at the smiling lustrous side Aristides, whose busy brain was wondering how he could mystify this unwelcome and unexpected sister. Why, yes, Aristides cousin to your great-aunt Léonie at Raphael, but you are too young to remember me. I will tell that, she said, disappearing down the narrow passage. Aristides went to the doorway and stood there, looking out into the not-too-savory street. On the opposite side, which was in the shade, the tenants of the modest little shops, sat by their doors or on chairs on the pavement. There was considerable whispering among them, and various glances were cast at him. Presently footsteps behind caused him to turn. There was Zet. She had evidently been weeping since they had parted, for her eyelids were red. She started on beholding him. You! he laughed and shook her hesitating hands. It is I, Aristides, but you have grown. Pequer, how you have grown! He swung her hands apart and laughed merrily in her bewildered eyes, to think that the little Zet and pigtails and short-checked skirt should have grown into this beautiful woman. I compliment you on your wife, Monsieur Boca d'Aune. Monsieur Boca d'Aune did not reply, but Aristides' swift glance noticed a spasm of pain shoot across his broad face. And the good Aunt Leonie? Is she well, and does she still make her matelot of eel? Ah, they were so good, those matelots! Aunt Leonie died two years ago, Zet. The poor woman, and I, who never knew, tell me about her. The Salamangé door stood open. He drew her thither by his curious fascination. They entered, and he shut the door behind them. Voila! said he. Didn't I tell you I should see you again? Vous avez un fameur tout paix. Vous! said Zet, half angrily. He laughed, having been accused of confounded impudence many times before in the course of his adventurous life. If I told my husband, he would kill you. Precisely. So you're not going to tell him. I adore you. I have come to protect you. Foire de Provençal. The only way to protect me is to prove my innocence. And then? She drew herself up, and looked him straight between the eyes. I'll recognize that you have a loyal heart, and will be your very good friend. Madame Zet! cried Avastiti. I will devote my life to your service. Tell me the particulars of the affair. Ask Monsieur Bochadon. She left him, and sailed out of the room, and passed the bureau with her proud head in the air. Evaristiti Pujol had the rapturous idea of proving the innocence of Madame Zet crying a thing over the fat pig of a husband, and eventually, in a fantastic fashion, carrying off the insulted and spotless lady to some bower of delight. The castle at Papignon? Why not? You must blame not him, but Provence, whose sons, if not devout, are frankly pagan. Sometimes they are both. Monsieur Bochadon sat in his bureau, pretending to do accounts, and tracing columns of figures with a huge trembling forefinger. He looked the picture of woe. Avastiti decided to bide his opportunity. He went out into the streets again, now with the object of killing time. The afternoon had advanced, and trees and buildings cast cool shadows in which one could walk with comfort. And Nîme, clear bright city of White Avenues, and broad open spaces, instinct, too, with the grandeur that was Rome's, is an idler's paradise. Avastiti knew it well, but he never tired of it. He wandered round the Maison Carré, his responsive nature delighting in the splendor of the temple with its fluted Corinthian columns, its noble entablature, its massive pediment, its perfect proportions. Reluctantly turned down the Boulevard Victor Hugo, pass the lycee in the bouche, made the circuit of the mighty double-arched oval of the arena, and then retraced his steps. As he expected, Monsieur Bocardon had left the bureau. It was the hour of absinthe. The porter named Monsieur Bocardon's Habitual Café. There, in a morose corner of the terrace, Avastiti found the huge man, gloomily contemplating an absurdly small glass of the bitters known as Dubonnet. Avastiti raised his hat, asked permission to join him, and sat down. Monsieur Bocardon, he said, carefully mixing the absinthe, which he had ordered, I learned from my fair cousin that there is between you a regrettable misunderstanding, for which I am sincerely sorry. She calls it a misunderstanding? He laughed mirthlessly. Women have their own vocabulary. Listen, my good sir, there is infamy between us. When a wife betrays a man like me, kind, indulgent, crossful, who has worshipped the ground she treads on, it is not a question of misunderstanding. It is infamy. If she had anywhere to lay her head, I would turn her out of doors tonight. But she has not. You who are her relative know I married her without a dowry. You alone of her family survive. It was on the tip of Avastiti's impulsive tongue to say that he would be only too willing to shelter her, but prudently he refrained. She has broken my heart, continued Bocardon. Avastiti asked for details of the unhappy affair. The large man hesitated for a moment and glanced suspiciously at his companion, but fascinated by the clear, luminous eyes he launched with southern violence into a whirling story. The villain was a traveller and buttons. Buttons! To be wronged by a traveller and diamonds might have its compensations. Butt-buttons! Linen-buttons! Bone-buttons! Brass-buttons! Trouser-buttons! To be a traveller in the inanity of buttonholes was the only lower degradation. His name was Bocardon. He uttered it scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bonton was unthinkable. This Bonton was a regular client of the hotel and such a client, who never ordered a bottle of La Cachette or coffee or cognac, a contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions. Now he was certain. He tossed off his glass of Dubonnet, ordered another, and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, whisperings of a dreadful incident, the central fact of which was a glimpse of Zet gliding wraith-like down a corridor. Lastly there was the culminating proof, a letter found that morning in Zet's room. He drew a crumpled sheet from his pocket and handed it to Aristide. It was a crude, flaming, reprehensible, and entirely damning, epistle. Aristide turned cold, shivering at the idea of the superb and dainty Zet coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bonton with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of absinthe and wished it were Bonton's blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon's face and, gathering at the ends of his scrubby moustache, dripped in splashes on the marble table. I loved her so tenderly, Monsieur Zetty. The cry, so human, went straight to Aristide's heart. A sympathetic tear glistened in his bright eyes. He was suddenly filled with an immense pity for this grief-stricken, helpless giant. An odd, feminine streak ran through his nature and showed itself in queer places. Impulsively he stretched out his hand. You're going, ask Bocardon? No, a sign of good friendship. They gripped both hands across the table. A new emotion threw through the facile Aristide. Bocardon, I devote myself to you, he cried, with a flamboyant gesture. What can I do? Alas, nothing, replied the other miserably. And Zet, what does she say to it all? The mountainous shoulders heaved with a shrug. She denies everything. She had never seen the letter until I showed it to her. She did not know how it came into her room, as if that were possible. It's improbable, said Aristide gloomily. They talked. Bocardon, in a choking voice, told the simple tale of their married happiness. It had been a love-match, different from the ordinary marriages of reason and arrangement. Not a cloud since their wedding day. They were called the turtledoves of the Rue de la Curaterie. He had not even manifested the jealousy justifiable in the possessor of so beautiful a wife. He had trusted her implicitly. He was certain of her love. That was enough. They had had one child who died. Grief had brought them even nearer each other. And now this stroke had been dealt. It was a knife being turned round in his heart. It was agony. They walked back to the hotel together. Zet, who was sitting by the desk in the bureau, rose and, without a word or look, banished down the passage. Bocardon, with a great sigh, took her place. It was dinner time. The half-dozen guests and frequenters filled for a moment the little hall, some waiting to wash their hands at the primitive Lavabo by the foot of the stairs. Aristide accompanied them into the Salamangé, where he dined in solemn silence. The dinner over, he went out again, passing by the bureau, where Bocardon, in his dim recesses, was eating a sad meal, brought to him, by the melancholy ou femille. Zet, he conjectured, was dining in the kitchen. An atmosphere of desolation impregnated the place, as though a corpse were somewhere in the house. Aristide drank his coffee at the nearest café in a complicated state of mind. He had fallen furiously in love with the lady, believing her to be the victim of a jealous husband. In an outburst of generous emotion, he had taken the husband to his heart, seeing that he was a good man stricken to death. Now he loved the lady, loved the husband, and hated the villain Bonton. What Aristide felt, he felt fiercely. He would reconcile these two people he loved, and then go, and if not assassinate Bonton, at least do him some bodily injury. With this idea in his head, he paid for his coffee and went back to the hotel. He found Zet taking her turn at the bureau for clients have to be attended to, even in the most distressing circumstances. She was talking to a new arrival, trying to smile a welcome. Aristide, loitering near, watched her beautiful face, to which the perfect classic features gave an air of noble purity. His soul revolted at the idea of her mixing herself up with a sordid wretch like Bonton. It was unbelievable. Epia, she said, as soon as they were alone. Madame Zet, today I called your husband at Scoundrel in a crocodile. I was wrong. I find him a man with a beautiful nature. You needn't tell me that, Monsieur Alastide. You are breaking his heart, Madame Zet. And is he not breaking mine? He has told you, I suppose. Am I responsible for what I know nothing more about than a babe unborn? You don't believe I am speaking the truth? And your professions this afternoon. Wind and gas, like the words of all men. Madame Zet, cried Aristide, I said I would devote my life to your service, and so I will. I'll go and find Bonton and kill him. He watched her narrowly, but she did not grow pale, like a woman whose lover is threatened with mortal peril. She said, dryly, you had better have some conversation with him first. Where is he to be found? She shrugged her shoulders. How do I know? He left by the early train this morning, that goes in the direction of Terescan. Then tomorrow, said Aristide, who knew the ways of commercial travelers, he will be at Terescan, or at Avignon, or at Orle. I heard him say that he had just done Orle. Tant mieux. I shall find him either at Terescan or Avignon. And by the Teresque of Saint-Mata, I'll bring you his head, and you can put it up outside, as a sign and call the place Hotel de la Tête Bonton. Early the next morning, Aristide started on his quest, without informing the good Boquetton of his intentions. He would go straight to Avignon, as the more likely place. Inquiries at the various hotels would soon enable him to hunt down his quarry. And then, it did not quite know what would happen then, but it would be something picturesque, something entirely unforeseen by Bonton, something to be thrillingly determined by the inspiration of the moment. In any case, he would wipe the stain from the family escutcheon. By this time he had convinced himself that he belonged to the Boquetton family. The only other occupant of the first class compartment was an elderly Englishwoman of sour aspect. Aristide, his head full of Zet and Bonton, scarcely noticed her. The train started and sped through the sunny land of vine and olive. They had almost reached Tarathcon, when a sudden thought hit him between the eyes like the blow of a fist. He gasped for a moment, then he burst into shrieks of laughter, kicking his legs up and down and waving his arms in maniacal mirth. After that he rose and danced. The sour-faced woman in mortal terror fled into the corridor. She must have reported Aristide's behavior to the guard, for in a minute or two that official appeared in the doorway. K'est-ce qu'est-il y a? Aristide paused in his demonstration of merriment. Monsieur said he, I have just discovered what I am going to do to Monsieur Bonton. Delight bubbled out of him as he walked from the Avignon railway station up the cour de la République. The rich bonton allait at his mercy. He had not proceeded far, however, when his quick eye caught sight of an object in the ramshackle display of a curiosity-dealers. He paused in front of the window, fascinated. He rubbed his eyes. No, he said, it is not a dream. The bonture is on my side. He went into the shop and bought the object. It was a pair of handcuffs. At a little after three o'clock, the small and dilapidated Hotel Omnibus drove up before the Hotel de la Carati, and from it descended Aristide de Pujol, radiant-eyed, and a scrubby little man with a goatee beard, pants-née, and a dome-like forehead, who, pale and trembling, seemed stricken with a great fear. It was Bonton. Together they entered the little hall. As soon as Bonton saw his enemy, his eyes blazed with fury and uttering an inarticulate roar, he rushed out of the bureau with clenched fists, murderously uplifted. The terrified Bonton shrank into a corner, protected by Aristide, who, smiling like an angel of peace, intercepted the onslaught of the huge man. Be calm, my good Bocadon, be calm. But Bocadon would not be calm. He found his voice. Ah, scoundrel, miscreant, wretch, traitor! When his vocabulary of vituperation and his breath failed him, he paused and mopped his forehead. Bonton came a step or two forward. I know, miss sure, I have all the wrong on my side. Your anger is justifiable, but I never dreamt of the disastrous effect of my acts. Let me see her, my good M. Bocadon. I beseech you. Let you see her, said Bocadon, growing purple in the face. At this moment, Zet came running up the passage. What is all this noise about? Ah, madame cried Bonton eagerly. I am heartbroken. You are so kind. Let me see her. Ah, exclaimed Bocadon in stupefaction. See whom, asked Zet, my dear dead one, my dear Oofemi, who has committed suicide. But he's mad, shouted Bocadon, in his great voice, Oofemi, Oofemi, come here. At the side of Oofemi, pale and shivering with apprehension, Bonton sank upon a bench by the wall. He stared at her as if she were a ghost. I don't understand, he murmured faintly, looking like a trapped hare at Aristide Pujol, who, devinair, hands on hips, stood a little way apart. Nor I either, cried Bocadon. A great light dawned on Zet's beautiful face. I do understand. She exchanged glances with Aristide. He came forward. It's very simple, said he, taking the stage with childlike exultation. I go to find Bonton this morning to kill him. In the train I have a sudden inspiration, a revelation from heaven. It is not Zet, but Oofemi, that is the bon ennemi of Bonton. I laugh and frighten a long-tooth English old maid out of her wits. Shall I get out at Tarascon and return to Nîmes and tell you, or shall I go on? I decide to go on. I make my plan. Ah! But when I make a plan, it's all in a second, a flash, flit. At Apignon I see a pair of handcuffs. I buy them. I spend hours tracking that animal there. At last I find him at the station about to start for Lyon. I tell him I am a police agent. I let him see the handcuffs, which convince him. I tell him Oofemi, and the consequence of the discovery of his letter, has committed suicide. There is a procé-vébal in which he is wanted. I summon him to accompany me in the name of the law. And there he is. Then that letter was not for my wife, as Bonton, who was not quick-witted, but no imbécile, cried Aristide. Bonton hugged his wife in his vast embrace. The tears ran down his cheeks. Ah! my little Zet! My little Zet! Will you ever pardon me? Oui, je te pardon gros, Jean-Glut, said Zet. And you, shouted Boca-Don, falling on Aristide, I must embrace you also. He kissed him on both cheeks in his expansive way, and thrust him towards Zet. You can also kiss my wife. It is I, Boca-Don, who commanded. The fire of a not-ignoble pride raced through Aristide's veins. He was a hero. He knew it. It was a moment worth living. The embraces and other expressions of joy and gratitude being temporarily suspended, attention was turned to the unheroic couple who up to then had said not one word to each other. The explanation of their conduct, too, was simple, apparently. They were in love. She had no dowry. He could not marry her, as his parents would not give their consent. She, for her part, was frightened to death by the discovery of the letter lest Boca-Don should turn her out of the house. What dowry will satisfy your parents? Nothing less than twelve thousand francs. I give it, said Boca-Don. Reckless in his newly found happiness, marry her. The clock in the bureau struck four. Aristide pulled out his watch. Saper le pape d'etre, he cried, and disappeared like a flash into the street. But what's the matter with him? shouted Boca-Don in amazement. Zet went to the door. He's running as if he had the devil at his heels. Was he always like that, asked her husband? How always! Pablo, when you used to see him at your aunt Léonise. Zet flushed red. To repudiate the saviour of her entire family were an act of treachery, too black for her ingenuous heart. Oh yes, she replied calmly, coming back into the hall. We used to call him Cousin Quicksilver. In the big avenue, Aristide hailed a passing cab, to the hotel de Luxembourg at a gallop. In the joyous excitement of the last few hours, this child of impulse and sunshine, this dragonfly of a man, had entirely forgotten the appointment at two o'clock with the American millionaire, and the fortune that depended on it. He would be angry at being kept waiting. Aristide had met Americans before. His swift brain invented an elaborate excuse. He leaped from the cab and entered the vestibule of the hotel. Can I see, Monsieur Congleton? he asked at the bureau. An American gentleman, he has gone, Monsieur. He left by the 330 train. Are you, Monsieur Pujol? There is a letter for you. With a sinking heart he opened it and read, Dear sir, I was in this hotel at two o'clock, according to arrangement. As my last train to Japan leaves at 330, I regret I cannot await your convenience. The sight of the hotel is satisfactory. Your business methods are not. I am sorry, therefore, not to be able to entertain the matter further. Faithfully, William B. Congleton. He stared at the words for a few paralyzed moments. Then he stuffed the letter into his pocket and broke into a laugh. Said he, using the inelegant expletive whereby a Frenchman most adequately expresses his scorn of circumstances. If I have lost a fortune, I have gained two devoted friends, so I am the winner on the day's work. Whereupon he returned gaily to the bosom of the Boca d'An family, and remained there its cousin Quicksilver, and its entirely happy and idolized hero, until the indignation of the eminent Michel Say summoned him to Paris. And that is how a steedie bourgeois could live henceforward on nothing at all at Nîmes, whenever it suited him to visit that historic town.