wise, on and on,
although he hated travel and all its discomforts, knew no word of a
foreign language, knew no scrap of history, had no sense of beauty, was
utterly ignorant, as every single one of our expensively State-educated
English lower classes is, of everything that matters on God's earth; no
wonder that, in the unfamiliarity of foreign lands, feeling as helpless
as a ballet-dancer in a cavalry charge, he looked to Cook, or Lunn, or
the Agence Pujol to carry him through his uninspired pilgrimage. For
twenty years he had shown no sign of joy or sorrow or anger, scarcely
even of pleasure or annoyance. A tortoise could not have been more
unemotional. The unsuspected volcano had slumbered. To-day came
disastrous eruption. And what was a mere laughing, crying child of
a man like Aristide Pujol in front of a Ducksmith volcano?

"What is to become of me?" wailed Mrs. Ducksmith again.

"_Ma foi!_" said Aristide, with a shrug of his shoulders. "What's going
to become of anyone? Who can foretell what will happen in a minute's
time? _Tiens!_" he added, kindly laying his hand on the sobbing woman's
shoulder. "Be comforted, my poor Henriette. Just as nothing in this
world is as good as we hope, so nothing is as bad as we fear. _Voyons!_
All is not lost yet. We must return to the hotel."

She weepingly acquiesced. They walked through the quiet streets like
children whose truancy had been discovered and who were creeping back to
condign punishment at school. When they reached the hotel, Mrs.
Ducksmith went straight up to the woman's haven, her bedroom.

Aristide tugged at his Vandyke beard in dire perplexity. The situation
was too pregnant with tragedy for him to run away and leave the pair
to deal with it as best they could. But what was he to do? He sat down
in the vestibule and tried to think. The landlord, an unstoppable
gramophone of garrulity, entering by the street-door and bearing down
upon him, put him to flight. He, too, sought his bedroom, a cool
apartment with a balcony outside the French window. On this balcony,
which stretched along the whole range of first-floor bedrooms, he
stood for a while, pondering deeply. Then, in an absent way, he
overstepped the limit of his own room-frontage. A queer sound startled
him. He paused, glanced through the open window, and there he saw a
sight which for the moment paralyzed him.

[Illustration: THERE HE SAW A SIGHT WHICH FOR THE MOMENT PARALYZED HIM]

Recovering command