ul franc.

So once more we took to the high road, and Paragot threw off the
depressing burden of Mammon (Joanna) and became his irresponsible self
again.

I have but confused memories of our fantastic journeyings. Stretches of
long white road and blazing sun. Laughing valleys and corn fields and
white farmsteads among the trees. Now and then a village fete or wedding
at which we played to the enthusiasm of the sober vested peasantry.
Nights passed in barns, deserted byres, on the floor of cottages and
infinitesimal cafes. Hours of idleness by the wayside after the midday
meal, when the four of us sat round the fare provided by Blanquette,
black bread, cheese, charcuterie and the eternal bottle of thin wine. It
was rough, but there was plenty. Paragot saw to that, in spite of
Blanquette's economical endeavours. Sometimes he would sleep while she
and I chatted in low voices so as not to wake him. She told me of her
wanderings with the old man, the hardness of her former life. Often she
had cried herself to sleep for hunger, shivering in wet rags the long
night through. Now it was all changed: she ate too much and was getting
as fat as a pig. Did I not think so? _Voila!_ In her artless way she
guided my finger into her waistband and then swelled herself out like
the frog in the fable to prove the increase in her girth. She spoke in
awestricken whispers of the Master himself. Save that he was utterly
kind, impulsive, generous, boastful, and according to her untrained ear
a violinist of the first quality, she knew not what manner of man he
was. She had enough imagination to feel vaguely that he had dropped from
vast spaces into her narrow world. But he was a mystery.

Once, the previous summer, as she was resting by the roadside with the
old man, even as we were doing then, an amiable person, she told me,
with easel and stool and paint-box, came along and requested their
permission to make an oil sketch of them. While he painted he conversed,
telling them of Sicily whither he was going and of Paris whence he came.
In a dim way she associated him with Paragot. The two had the same trick
of voice and manner, and held unusual views as to the value of five
francs. But the amiable painter had been a gentleman elegantly dressed,
such as she saw in the large towns driving in cabs and consuming drinks
in expensive cafes, whereas the Master was attired like a peasant and
slept in barns and did everything that the elegantly dressed