fall in love it will be with a very
beautiful lady."

Paragot pointed upwards. "I see another crack in my friend's sides. We
all fall in love with beautiful ladies, my poor Asticot, one after the
other, plunging into destruction with the comic sheep-headedness of the
muttons of Panurge. Another woolly one over? Ho! ho! laughs the man in
the moon, and crack go his sides."

The door opened behind us and the proprietor of the auberge appeared on
the threshold.

"Give me half a litre of red wine, Monsieur Bonnivard," cried Paragot.
"I am the descendant of Maitre Jehan Cotard whose throat was so dry that
in this world he was never known to spit."

"Bien, Monsieur," said the _patron_.

Paragot filled his porcelain pipe and lit it with clumsy fingers, and
did not speak till his wine was brought.

"My son, we are leaving Aix the first thing in the morning."

I started up in alarm. We had not finished our engagement at the
Restaurant du Lac.

"I care no more for the Restaurant du Lac than for the rest of the idiot
universe," he declared.

"But Blanquette--it would break her heart."

"All women's hearts can be mended for twopence."

"And men's?"

"They have to go about with them broken, my son, and the pieces clank
and jangle and chink and jingle inside like a crate of broken crockery.
We leave Aix tomorrow."

"But Master," I cried, "there is no necessity."

"What do you mean?"

"She is leaving Aix herself tomorrow."

"She!" he shouted, quite sober for the moment. "Who the devil do you
mean by 'she'?"

I upbraided myself for a vain idiot. Here was I on the point of breaking
my oath sworn on Joanna's hand. I felt ashamed and frightened. He
grasped my shoulder roughly.

"Who do you mean by 'she'? Tell me."

"The Lady of the Lake, Master," said I.

He looked at me for a moment keenly, then relaxed his grip and shrugged
his shoulders with the ghost of a laugh.

"If you see holes in ladders in this perspicacious fashion you'll have
to forsake the paths of art for the higher walks of the Prefecture of
Police."

He puffed silently at his pipe for a few moments and then turning his
head away asked me in a low voice:

"How can you know that she is leaving tomorrow?"

I lied for the first time to Paragot.

"I overheard her say so while I was waiting with the tambourine."

"Sure?"

"Quite sure."

This seemed to satisfy him, to my great relief. How my poor little oath
would have fared under cross exam