ist down on the table and started to his
feet. Blanquette lifted a scared wet face, dimly seen in the half light.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" cried he, "If you hold so much to your ten francs
and half a goose, I myself will come with you to Chambery tomorrow and
fiddle at the wedding."

"You, Monsieur?" she gasped.

"Yes, I. Why not? Do you think I can't scrape catgut as well as Pere
Paragot?"

He walked to and fro declaring his musical powers in his boastful way.
If he chose he could rip out the hearts of a dead Municipal Council
with a violin, and could set a hospital for paralytics a-dancing. He
would have fiddled the children of Hamelin away from the Pied Piper.
Didn't Blanquette believe him?

"But yes, Monsieur," she said fervently.

"Ask Asticot."

My faith in him was absolute. To my mind he had even understated his
abilities. The experience of the disillusioning years has since caused
me to modify my opinions; but Paragot's boastfulness has not lessened
him in my eyes. And this leads to a curious reflection. When a Gascon
boasts, you love him for it; when a Prussian does it, your toes tingle
to kick him to Berlin. His very whimsical braggadocio made Paragot
adorable, and I am at a loss to think what he would have been without
it.

"Of course," said he, "if you are proud, if you don't want to be seen in
the company of a scarecrow like me, there is nothing more to be said."

Blanquette humbly repudiated the charge of pride. Her soul was set on
her ten francs and she didn't care how she got them. She accepted
Monsieur's generous offer out of a full heart.

"That's sense," said my master. "We shall rehearse at daybreak."

CHAPTER VI

DAWN found us all in a field some distance from the cafe--Paragot,
Blanquette, Narcisse, the zither, the fiddle and I, and while the two
musicians rehearsed the jingly waltzes and polkas that made up the old
man's repertoire, I tried to explain the situation to Narcisse who sat
with his ears cocked wondering what the deuce all the noise was about.

"Ah, Monsieur," said Blanquette, during a pause, "you play like a great
artist."

"Didn't I tell you so?" he cried triumphantly.

"You must have studied much."

"Prodigiously," said he.

"Pere Paragot had played the violin for sixty years, but he could not
make it sing like that."

"You would not compare Pere Paragot with my master?" I exclaimed by way
of rebuke.

Blanquette acquiesced humbly.

"When one hears Mo