sat
on the bench and burst out crying and Narcisse jumped up and licked my
face.

CHAPTER IX

IT was nearly midnight when Paragot returned to our inn on the outskirts
of the town. He reeled up to the doorstep where I sat in the moonlight
awaiting his return.

"Why aren't you in bed?"

"It was too hot and I couldn't sleep, Master," said I. As a matter of
fact I had been dismally failing to compose a poem on Joanna after the
style of Maitre Francois Villon. Just as youthful dramatists begin with
a five act tragedy, so do youthful poets begin with a double ballade. In
order to eke out the slender stock of rhymes to Joanna, I had to drag in
Indianna which somehow didn't fit. I remember also that she showered her
favours like manna, which was not very original.

Paragot seated himself heavily by my side.

"The moon has a baleful influence, my son," said he in a thick voice.
"And you'll come under it if you sit too long beneath its effulgence.
That's what has happened to me. It makes one talk unmentionable
imbecility."

He just missed concertina-ing the last two words, and looked at me with
an air of solemn triumph.

"It isn't the Man in the Moon's fault, my little Asticot," he continued.
"I've been having a very interesting conversation with him. He is a most
polite fellow. He said if I would go up and join him he would make room
for me. It's all a lie, you know, about his having been sent there for
gathering sticks on a Sunday. He went of his own accord, because it was
the only place where he could be four thousand miles away from any
woman. Think of it, little Asticot of my heart. There are lots of lies
told about the moon, he says. He looks down on the earth and sees all of
us little worms wriggling in and out and over one another and thinking
ourselves so important and he cracks his sides with laughing; and your
bald-headed idiots with spyglasses take the cracks for mountain ranges
and volcanoes. I'm going to live in the moon, away from female feminine
women, and if you are good my son, you shall come too."

I explained to him as delicately as I could that I should regard such a
change rather as a punishment than as a reward. He broke into a laugh.

"You too--with the milk of the feeding-bottle still wet on your lips?
The trail of the petticoat's over us all! What has been putting the sex
feminine into your little turnip-head? Have you fallen in love with
Blanquette?"

"No, Master," said I. "When I