set
the girl's eyes dancing. After that he told some of the funny little
stories which had brought him disaster at the academy. Mr. Smith, with
jovial magnanimity, declared that he was the first Frenchman he had ever
met with a sense of humour.

"But I thought, Baron," said he, "that you lived all your life shut up
in that old chateau of yours?"

"_Tiens!_" thought Aristide. "I am still a Baron, and I have an old
chateau."

"Tell us about the chateau. Has it a fosse and a drawbridge and a Gothic
chapel?" asked Miss Christabel.

"Which one do you mean?" inquired Aristide, airily. "For I have two."

When relating to me this Arabian Nights' adventure, he drew my special
attention to his astuteness.

His host's eye quivered in a wink. "The one in Languedoc," said he.

Languedoc! Almost Pujol's own country! With entire lack of morality, but
with picturesque imagination, Aristide plunged into a description of
that non-existent baronial hall. Fosse, drawbridge, Gothic chapel were
but insignificant features. It had tourelles, emblazoned gateways,
bastions, donjons, barbicans; it had innumerable rooms; in the _salle
des chevaliers_ two hundred men-at-arms had his ancestors fed at a
sitting. There was the room in which Francois Premier had slept, and one
in which Joan of Arc had almost been assassinated. What the name of
himself or of his ancestors was supposed to be Aristide had no ghost of
an idea. But as he proceeded with the erection of his airy palace he
gradually began to believe in it. He invested the place with a living
atmosphere; conjured up a staff of family retainers, notably one
Marie-Joseph Loufoque, the wizened old major-domo, with his long white
whiskers and blue and silver livery. There were also Madeline Mioulles,
the cook, and Bernadet the groom, and La Petite Fripette the goose girl.
Ah! they should see La Petite Fripette! And he kept dogs and horses and
cows and ducks and hens--and there was a great pond whence frogs were
drawn to be fed for the consumption of the household.

Miss Christabel shivered. "I should not like to eat frogs."

"They also eat snails," said her father.

"I have a snail farm," said Aristide. "You never saw such interesting
little animals. They are so intelligent. If you're kind to them they
come and eat out of your hand."

[Illustration: "AH! THE PICTURES," CRIED ARISTIDE, WITH A WIDE SWEEP
OF HIS ARMS]

"You've forgotten the pictures," said Mr. Smith.