been
awakened; but he could not see palm trees.

"What would you have? You cannot grow baobabs on the Boulevards."

"_Ma foi!_" said he, "it is terrible what you tell me, but what are we to
do?"

"I thought you might help," said Adams.

"I? With all the power possible and goodwill. It is evident to me that
should you wish for success in this matter, you should found a society."

"Yes?"

"There is nothing done in a public way without cooeperation. You must found
a society; you may use my name. I will even let you put it on the
committee list. I will also subscribe."

Now Pugin was on the committee lists of half a dozen charitable and
humanitarian concerns. His secretary had them all down in a book; but
Pugin himself, lost in his art and the work of his life, had forgotten
their very names. So would it be with this.

"Thanks," said the visitor.

Pugin would lend his purse to the cause, and his name, but he would not
lend his pen--simply because he could not. To every literary man there are
dead subjects; this question was dead to the author of "Absolution"--as
uninspiring as cold mutton.

"Thanks," said Adams, and rose to take his leave. His rough-hewn mind
understood with marvellous perspicuity Pugin's position.

"And one moment," cried the little man, after he had bidden his visitor
good-bye and the latter was leaving the room. "One moment; why did I not
think of it before? You might go and see Ferminard."

He ran to a desk in the corner of the room, took a visiting card and
scribbled Ferminard's address upon it, explaining as he wrote that
Ferminard was the deputy for ---- in Provence; a Socialist it is true, but
a terrible man when roused; that the very name of injustice was sufficient
to bring this lion from his den.

"Tell him Pugin said so," cried he, following his visitor this time out on
the landing and patting him on the shoulder in a fatherly manner, "and you
will find him in the Rue Auber, No. 14; it is all on the card; and convey
my kind regards to Mademoiselle ----, that charming lady to whose
appreciation of my poor work I owe the pleasure of your visit."

"Nice little man," said Adams to himself as he walked down the Boulevard
Haussmann.

He found Ferminard at home, in an apartment smelling of garlic and the
south. Ferminard, a tall, black-bearded creature, with a glittering eye; a
brigand from the Rhone Valley who had flung himself into the politics of
his country as a torpedo flings it