urity for a farmer's wife of the better class or a decent
villager. For an introduction the opportunity was favorable enough.
On her side, the _quasi_ farmer's wife, seeing in the dusk an honest
fellow dragging a horse, took him for a "gentleman's gentleman" at
the least, and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of
which the French people have the secret. Each presented the other with
a hand and a frank smile.

[Illustration: FIDELITY.]

Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha! usually
infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer could not
show much merriment. A sewing-woman with a capacity for embroidery,
her needle had given her support, but now a sudden warning of
paralysis, and symptoms of cholera added to that, had driven her
almost to despair. She was without home, friend or profession.

[Illustration: A LITTLE VISITOR.]

Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side to
a good village cure's two miles off--the same who had assisted him to
his first communion, and for whom he subsequently became a beadle. The
kind priest opened his arms to the man, his heart to the woman, his
stable to the horse. For his second patient my Bohemian set in motion
all his stock of curative ideas. In a month she was well, and the cure
no longer had three pensioners, for of two of them he made one.

Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame Joliet
were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
respectfully when he passed through a village.

One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed him
much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not how
to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting her to
resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter seemed
like losing existence itself.

One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord
to resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were
his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards and a
gypsy's inventiveness.

Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several years,
lived the independen