Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement and gratitude,
and then he seized Newman's hand, pressed it between his own ten
fingers, and gazed at him with watery eyes. "As pretty as that? They
shall be a thousand times prettier--they shall be magnificent, sublime.
Ah, if I only knew how to paint, myself, sir, so that I might lend a
hand! What can I do to thank you? Voyons!" And he pressed his forehead
while he tried to think of something.

"Oh, you have thanked me enough," said Newman.

"Ah, here it is, sir!" cried M. Nioche. "To express my gratitude, I will
charge you nothing for the lessons in French conversation."

"The lessons? I had quite forgotten them. Listening to your English,"
added Newman, laughing, "is almost a lesson in French."

"Ah, I don't profess to teach English, certainly," said M. Nioche. "But
for my own admirable tongue I am still at your service."

"Since you are here, then," said Newman, "we will begin. This is a very
good hour. I am going to have my coffee; come every morning at half-past
nine and have yours with me."

"Monsieur offers me my coffee, also?" cried M. Nioche. "Truly, my beaux
jours are coming back."

"Come," said Newman, "let us begin. The coffee is almighty hot. How do
you say that in French?"

Every day, then, for the following three weeks, the minutely respectable
figure of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of little
inquiring and apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of
Newman's morning beverage. I don't know how much French our friend
learned, but, as he himself said, if the attempt did him no good, it
could at any rate do him no harm. And it amused him; it gratified that
irregularly sociable side of his nature which had always expressed
itself in a relish for ungrammatical conversation, and which often, even
in his busy and preoccupied days, had made him sit on rail fences
in young Western towns, in the twilight, in gossip hardly less than
fraternal with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers. He had
notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had been
assured, and his judgment approved the advice, that in traveling abroad
it was an excellent thing to look into the life of the country. M.
Nioche was very much of a native and, though his life might not be
particularly worth looking into, he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded
unit in that picturesque Parisian civilization which offered our hero so
much easy ent