I think," he said, "I will buy myself a commission. I should like to
go to Berlin. Yes--Howard, _mon brave_, I will buy myself a
commission."

"With what?"

"Ah--mon Dieu!--that is true. I have no money. I am ruined. I forgot
that."

And he waved a gay salutation of the whip to a passing friend.

"And then, also," he added, with a face suddenly lugubrious, "we have
the terrible business of the Vicomte. Howard--listen to me--at all
costs the ladies must never see _that_--must never know. Dieu! it was
horrible. I feel all twisted here--as when I smoked my first cigar."

He touched himself on the chest, and with one of his inimitable
gestures described in the air a great upheaval.

"I will try to prevent it," I answered.

"Then you will succeed, for your way of suggesting might easily be
called by another name. And it is not only the women who obey you. I
told Lucille the other day that she was afraid of you, and she blazed
up in such a fury of denial that I felt smaller than nature has made
me. Her anger made her more beautiful than ever, and I was stupid
enough to tell her so. She hates a compliment, you know."

"Indeed, I have never tried her with one."

Alphonse looked at me with grave surprise.

"It is a good thing," he said, "that you do not love her. Name of God!
where should I be?"

"But it is with Madame and not Mademoiselle Lucille that we shall have
to do this afternoon," I said hastily.

Although he was more or less acknowledged as an aspirant to Lucille's
hand, Giraud refused to come within the door when we reached the Hotel
Clericy.

"No," he answered; "they will not want to see me at such a time. It is
only when people want to laugh that I am required."

I found Madame quite calm, and all her thoughts were for Lucille. The
more a man is brought into contact with maternal love, even if it bear
in no way upon his own life, the better he will be for it--for this is
surely the loftiest of human feelings.

My own mother having died when I was but an infant, it had never been
my lot to live in intimacy with women, until fate guided me to the
Hotel Clericy.

At no time had I felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame de
Clericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast its sable veil
over her.

"Lucille," she said at once, "must not be allowed to grieve for me.
She has her own sorrow to bear, for she loved her father dearly. Do
not let her have any thought for me."

And later, whe