iled at him largely. Madame Bringuet,
reeking in her tight gown, held up to him a brimming glass of champagne;
the bride threw him a rose. He kissed the flower, put it in his
button-hole and after bowing low drank to her health. I recalled my
childish ambition to keep a fried fish shop and despised it heartily. If
I only could play the violin like Paragot, thought I, and win the
plaudits of the multitude, what greater glory could the earth hold? The
practical Blanquette woke me from my dreams. Now was the moment, said
she, to go round with the hat. I swung myself down from the verandah,
the traditional shell (in lieu of a hat) in my hand, and went my round.
Money was poured into it. Time after time I emptied it into my bulging
pockets. When I returned to the verandah, Blanquette's eyes distended
strangely. She glanced at Paragot, who smiled at her in an absent
manner. For the moment the artist in him was predominant. He was the
centre of his little world, and its adulation was as breath to his
nostrils.

This is what I, the mature man, know to be the case. To me, then, he was
but the King receiving tribute from his subjects. When Paragot with a
flourish of his bow responded to the encore, I found my hand slip into
Blanquette's and there it remained in a tight grip till flushed and
triumphant he again acknowledged the applause. Nothing was said between
Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment.
And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue
lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face.

"My children," said Paragot, on our return journey in the close,
ill-lighted, wooden-seated third-class compartment, "we have had a
glorious day. One of those sun-kissed, snow-capped peaks that rise here
and there in the monotonous range of life. It fills the soul with poetry
and makes one talk in metaphor. In such moments as these we are all
metaphors, my son. We are illuminated expressions of the divine standing
for the commonplace things of yesterday and tomorrow. We have
accomplished what millions and millions are striving and struggling and
failing to do at this very hour. We have achieved _success_! We have
left on human souls the impress of our mastery! We are also all of us
dog-tired and, I perceive, disinclined to listen to transcendental
conversation."

"I'm not tired, master," I declared as stoutly as the effort of keeping
open two leaden eyelids would allow.

"And y