unicula_ as we drove in the
nails. When I make coffins again I shall sing that refrain. It has an
unisonal value that is positively captivating. Had it not been that a
diet of spaghetti and anaemic wine, a _tord-boyau_ (intestine-twister) of
unparalleled virulence undermined my constitution, and that the four
children, whose bedroom I shared, all took whooping-cough at once and
thus robbed me of sleep, I might have been coffin-making to the tune of
_Funiculi, Funicula_ to the present day."

Here and there were jottings of figures. I know now they refer to
Paragot's tiny patrimony on which he--and I, in after years--subsisted.
It was so small that no wonder he worked now and then for a living wage.

I also see now, as of course I could not be expected to see then, that
Paragot, being a creature of extremes, would either have the highest or
the lowest. In these travel-sketches, as he cannot go to Grand Hotels, I
find him avoiding like lazar-houses the commercial or family hostelries
where he will foregather with the half-educated, the half-bred, the
half-souled; the offence of them is too rank for his spirit. The
pretending simian class, aping the vices of the rich and instinct with
the vices of the low, and frank in neither, moves the man's furious
scorn. He will have realities at any cost. All said and done, the bugs
of Novortovshakaya did not masquerade as hummingbirds, nor merry
Giuseppi Sacconi of Verona as a critic of Girolami dai Libri.

"I don't mind," he writes on a loose sheet, apropos of nothing, "the
frank dunghill outside a German peasant's kitchen window. It is a matter
of family pride. The higher it can be piled the greater his
consideration. But what I loathe and abominate is the dungheap hidden
beneath Hedwige's draper papa's parlour floor."

When I came to this in my wrongful search through Paragot's papers, I
felt greatly relieved. I thought Hedwige had seduced him from his
allegiance to Joanna, and that he was sorry she had married the sergeant
with moustaches reaching to his _Pikelhaube_, though what part of his
person his _Pikelhaube_ was, I could not for the life of me imagine. I
pictured Hedwige as a gigantic awe-compelling lady. The name somehow
conveyed the idea to me. It was peculiarly comforting to learn that she
was a horrid girl whose papa had a draper's shop over a dunghill. I no
longer bothered my head concerning her, for soon I came across a
reference to Joanna.

"I was lounging one d