so young and
inexperienced as Mademoiselle de Clericy should be abroad on such a
day with no better escort than this old man.

"Pardon my addressing you," I said, "but I hear that you are seeking
a secretary. I only ask permission to call at your hotel and apply for
the post."

"But, mon grand monsieur," he said with a delightful playfulness,
spreading out his hands in recognition of my height and east-country
bulk, "this is no time to talk of affairs. To-day we are at pleasure."

"Not all, Monsieur; some are busy enough," I replied, handing him my
card, which he held close to his eyes, after the manner of one who has
never possessed long or keen sight.

"What determination!" he exclaimed, with an old man's tolerance. "Mon
Dieu! these English allies of ours!"

"Well!" he said, after a pause, "if Monsieur honours me with such a
request, I shall be in and at your service from ten o'clock to-morrow
morning."

He felt in his pocket and handed me a card with courtesy. It was quite
refreshing to meet such a man in Paris in 1869--so naive, so
unassuming, so free from that aggressive self-esteem which
characterized Frenchmen before the war. Since I had arrived in the
capital under the circumstances that amused John Turner so consumedly,
I had been tempted to raise my fist in the face of every second
flaneur I met on the boulevard.

Again I joined my English friend, who was standing where I had left
him, looking around him with a stout, good-natured tolerance.

"Well," he asked, "have you got the situation?"

"No; but I am going to call to-morrow morning at ten o'clock and
obtain it."

"Umph!" said John Turner; "I did not know you were such a scoundrel."

Chapter II

Monsieur

"La destinee a deux manieres de nous briser; en se refusant
a nos desirs et en les accomplissant."

To some the night brings wiser or at all events a second counsel. For
myself, however, it has never been so. In the prosecution of such
small enterprises as have marked a life no more eventful than those
around it, I have always awakened in the morning of the same mind as I
was when sleep laid its quiet hand upon me. It seems, moreover, that I
have made just as many as but no more mistakes than my neighbours.
Taking it likewise as a broad generality, the balance seems, in my
experience, to tell quite perceptibly in favour of those who make up
their minds and hold to that decision firmly, rather than towards such
men as s