h I knew naught of her
whereabouts.

"Mathilde is where none may touch her, monsieur; under the protection
of the daintiest lady of New France. It is her whim; and when a lady is
charming, an Intendant, even, must not trouble her caprice."

He did not need to speak more plainly. It was he who had prevented Bigot
from taking Mathilde away from Alixe, and locking her up, or worse. I
said nothing, however, and soon we were in a large room, sumptuously
furnished, looking out on the great square. The morning sun stared in,
some snowbirds twittered on the window-sill, and inside, a canary, in
an alcove hung with plants and flowers, sang as if it were the heart of
summer. All was warm and comfortable, and it was like a dream that I had
just come from the dismal chance of a miserable death. My cloak and cap
and leggings had been taken from me when I entered, as courteously
as though I had been King Louis himself, and a great chair was drawn
solicitously to the fire. All this was done by the servant, after
one quick look from Doltaire. The man seemed to understand his master
perfectly, to read one look as though it were a volume--

"The constant service of the antique world."

Such was Doltaire's influence. The closer you came to him, the more
compelling was he--a devilish attraction, notably selfish, yet capable
of benevolence. Two years before this time I saw him lift a load from
the back of a peasant woman and carry it home for her, putting into her
hand a gold piece on leaving. At another time, an old man had died of
a foul disease in a miserable upper room of a warehouse. Doltaire was
passing at the moment when the body should be carried to burial. The
stricken widow of the dead man stood below, waiting, but no one would
fetch the body down. Doltaire stopped and questioned her kindly, and
in another minute he was driving the carter and another upstairs at the
point of his sword. Together they brought the body down, and Doltaire
followed it to the burying-ground; keeping the gravedigger at his task
when he would have run away, and saying the responses to the priest in
the short service read above the grave.

I said to him then, "You rail at the world and scoff at men and many
decencies, and yet you do these things!"

To this he replied--he was in my own lodgings at the time--"The brain
may call all men liars and fools, but the senses feel the shock of
misery which we do not ourselves inflict. Inflicting, we are prone