lights and cliff shadows, if I had not seen the same blue face
distinctly in Madame Clementine's house. He was standing in the middle
of a room at the foot of the stairway as we passed his open door.

So unusual a personality was not out of place in a transplanted Parisian
tenement. Madame Clementine was a Parisian; and her house, set around
three sides of a quadrangle in which flowers overflowed their beds, was
a bit of artisan Paris. The ground-floor consisted of various levels
joined by steps and wide-jambed doors. The chambers, to which a box
staircase led, wanted nothing except canopies over the beds.

"Alors I give de convenable beds," said Madame Clementine, in mixed
French and English, as she poked her mattresses. "Des bons lits! T'ree
dollar one chambre, four dollar one chambre--" she suddenly spread her
hands to include both--"seven dollar de tout ensemble!"

It was delightful to go with any friend who might be forced by crowded
hotels to seek rooms in Madame Clementine's alley. The active, tiny,
Frenchwoman, who wore a black mob-cap every-where except to mass, had
reached present prosperity through past tribulation. Many years before
she had followed a runaway husband across the sea. As she stepped upon
the dock almost destitute the first person her eyes rested on was her
husband standing well forward in the crowd, with a ham under his arm
which he was carrying home to his family. He saw Clementine and dropped
the ham to run. The same hour he took his new wife and disappeared from
the island. The doubly deserted French-speaking woman found employment
and friends; and by her thrift was now in the way of piling up what she
considered a fortune.

The man on the rock near me was no doubt one of Madame Clementine's
permanent lodgers. Tourists ranting over the island in a single day had
not his repose. He met my discovering start with a dim smile and a bend
of his head, which was bare. His features were large, and his mouth
corners had the sweet, strong expression of a noble patience. What first
impressed me seemed to be his blueness, and the blurredness of his eyes
struggling to sight as Bartimeus' eyes might have struggled the instant
before the Lord touched them.

Only Asiatics realize the power of odors. The sense of smell is lightly
appreciated in the Western world. A fragrance might be compounded which
would have absolute power over a human being. We get wafts of scent
to which something in us irresistibl