."

"My good child!" cried he, interrupting her and pushing back her hands,
"what lunacy are you uttering? Do you imagine that I go about fiddling
for pence at village weddings?"

"But Monsieur--"

"But little imbecile, I did it to help you, to enable you to get your
ten francs and half a goose. Asticot too. Haven't you been enchanted all
day to be of service to Mademoiselle? Do you want to be paid for wearing
a red shirt with a tasselled collar and pommade in your hair? Aren't we
going about the world like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rescuing damsels
in distress? Isn't that the lodestar of our wanderings?"

"Yes, master," said I.

Blanquette looked open-mouthed from him to me, from me to him, scarce
able to grasp such magnanimity. To the peasant, money is a commodity to
be struggled for, fought for, grasped, prized; to be doled out like the
drops of a priceless Elixir Vitae. Paragot had the aristocratic, artistic
scorn of it; and I, as I have said before, was the pale reflexion of
Paragot.

"It is yours," I explained, as might a great prince's chamberlain, "the
master gained it for you."

The tears came into her eyes. The corners of her lips went down. Paragot
turned half round in his seat and put his hands on her shoulders.

"If you spill tears on the fowl you will make it too salt, and I shall
throw it out of the window."

* * * * *

Paragot paid the modest funeral expenses of the worn-out fiddler. Asked
why he did not leave the matter in the hands of the communal
authorities he replied that he could not take a man's name without
paying for it. Such an appellation as Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot was
worth a deal coffin and a mass or two. This fine sense of integrity was
above Blanquette's comprehension. She thought the funeral was a waste of
money.

"It should go to benefit the living and not the dead," she argued.

"Wait till you are dead yourself," he replied, "and see how you would
like to be robbed of your name. There are many things for you to learn,
my child."

"_Il n'y a pas beaucoup_--not many," she said with a sigh. "We who are
poor and live on the high-roads learn very quickly. If you are hungry
and have two sous you can buy bread. If you only have two sous and you
throw them to a dog who doesn't need them, you have nothing to buy bread
with, and you starve. And it is not so easy to gain two sous."

Paragot sucked reflectively at his porcelain pipe.

"Astic