The omnibus stopped in the garden, or, to be more exact, at the porch of the hotel opening into the garden. Not the ordinary omnibus with a flapping door fastened with a strap leading to the boot-leg of the man on top, a post-office box inside with a glass front, holding a smoky kerosene lamp, and two long pew-cushioned seats placed so close together that everybody rubs everybody else's knees when it is full; not that kind of an omnibus at all, but a wide, low, yellow-painted (yellow as a canary), morocco-cushioned, go-to-the-theatre-in kind of an omnibus drawn by a pair of stout Normandy horses, with two men in livery on the box in front and another on the lower step behind who helps you in and out and takes your bundles and does any number of delightful and courteous things.

This yellow-painted chariot, moreover, was just the kind of a vehicle that should have moved in and out of this flower-decked garden. Not only did its color harmonize with the surroundings—quite as a mass of yellow nasturtiums harmonizes with the peculiar soft green of its leaves—but its appointments were quite in keeping with the luxury and distinction of the place. For only millionaires and princes, and people who travel with valets and maids, and now and then a staid old painter like myself who is willing to be tucked away anywhere, but whose calling is supposed to lend Éclat to the register, are ever to be found there.

The omnibus, then, stopped at the hotel porch and in front of the manager, who stood with a bunch of telegrams in his hand. Behind him smiled the clerk, and on his right bowed the Lord High Porter in gold lace and buttons: everything is done in the best and most approved style at the Baur au Lac in Zurich.

"Did you telegraph, sir? No? Well—let—me-see— Ah, yes! I remember—you were here last year. Number 13, Fritz, on the second floor" (this to a boy), and the manager passed on and saluted the other passengers—two duchesses in silk dusters, a count in a straw hat with a green ribbon, and two Italian nobleman in low collars and mustaches. At least, they must have been noblemen or something better, judging from the profundity of the manager's bow and the alacrity with which Fritz, the boy, let go my bag and picked up three of theirs.

Another personage now stepped up—a little man with the eyes of a fox—a courier whom I had not seen for years.

"Why, Joseph! where did you drop from?" I asked.

"From the Engadine, my Lord, and I hope your Lordship is most well."

"Pretty well, Joseph. What are you doing here?"

"It is an Englishman—a lame Englishman—a matter of two weeks only. And you, my Lord?"

"Just from Venice, on my way back to Paris," I answered.

By this time the manager was gazing with his eyes twice their size, and the small boy was standing in the middle of a heap of bags, wondering which one of the nobilities (including myself) he would serve first.

Joseph had now divested me of my umbrella and sketch-trap and was facing the manager.

"Did I hear that thirteen was the number of his Lordship's room?" he inquired of that gentleman. "I will myself go. Give me the bag" (this to the boy). "This way, my Lord." And he led the way through the cool hall filled with flowering plants and up a staircase panelled with mirrors. I followed contentedly behind.

Joseph and I are old acquaintances. In my journeyings around Europe I frequently run across him. He and I have had some varied experiences together in our time—the first in Milan at the Hotel Imperial. A young bride and groom, friends of mine—a blue-eyed, sweet-faced young girl with a husband but one year her senior (the two with a £2,000 letter of credit, the gift of a doting father)—had wired for rooms for the night at the Imperial. It was about eight o'clock when the couple drove up in one of those Italian hacks cut low-neck—a landau really—with coachman and footman on the box, and Joseph in green gloves and a silk hat on the front seat. My personal salutations over, we all mounted the stairs, preceded by the entire staff with the proprietor at their head. Here on the first landing we were met by two flunkeys in red and a blaze of electric light which revealed five rooms. In one was spread a game supper with every variety of salad known to an Italian lunch-counter; in another—the salon—stood a mass of roses the size and shape of an oleander in full bloom; then came a huge bedroom, a bathroom and a boudoir.

The groom, young as he was, knew how little was left of the letter of credit. The bride did not. Neither did Joseph.

"What's all this for, Hornblend?" asked the groom, casting his eyes about in astonishment. Hornblend is the other half of Joseph's name.

"For Monsieur and Madame."

"What, for one night?"

Joseph worked both shoulders and extended his red fingers—he had removed his gloves—till they looked like two bunches of carrots.

"Does it not Monsieur please?"

"Please! Do you think I'm a royal family?"

The carrots collapsed, the shoulders stopped, and a pained expression overspread Joseph's countenance. The criticisms had touched his heart.

The groom and I put our heads together—mine is gray, and I have seen many couriers in my time. His was blond and curly, and Joseph was his first experience.

I beckoned to the proprietor.

"Who ordered this suite of rooms and all this tomfoolery?"

The man bowed and waved his hand loftily toward the groom.

"How?"

"By telegraph."

"Let me see the despatch."

One of the functionaries—the clerk—handed me the document.

"Is this the only one?"

"Yes."

"It is signed 'Joseph Hornblend,' you see."

"Yes."

"Then let Hornblend pay for it. Now be good enough to show these young people to a bedroom, and send your head-waiter to me. We will all dine downstairs together in the cafÉ."

Since that night in Milan Joseph always has called me "my Lord."

He had altered but little. His legs were perhaps more bowed, the checks of his trousers a trifle larger, and the part in his iron-gray hair less regular than in the old days, but the general effect was the same—the same flashy waistcoat, the same long gold watch-chain baited with charms, the same shiny, bell-crown silk hat, and the same shade of green kid gloves—same pair, I think. Nor had his manner changed—that cringing, deferential, attentive manner which is so flattering at first to the unsuspecting and inexperienced, and so positive and top-lofty when his final accounts are submitted—particularly if they are disputed. The voice, too, had lost none of its soft, purring quality—a church-whisper-voice with the drone of the organ in it.

And yet withal Joseph is not a bad fellow. Once he knows the size of your pocket-book he willingly adapts his expenditures to its contents. Ofttimes, it is true, there is nothing left but the pocket-book, but then some couriers would take that. When he is in doubt as to the amount, he tries experiments. I have learned since that the lay-out for the bride and groom that night in Milan was only one of his experiments—the proprietor being co-conspirator. The coach belonged to the hotel; the game supper was moved up from the restaurant, and the flowers had been left over from a dinner the night before. Had they all done duty, Joseph's commissions would have been that much larger. As it was, he collected his percentage only on the coach and the two men on the box and the flunkeys at the head of the stairs. These had been used. The other preparations were only looked at.

Then again, Joseph not only speaks seven languages, but he speaks them well—for Joseph—so much so that a stranger is never sure of his nationality.

"Are you French, Joseph?" I once asked him.

"No."

"Dutch?"

"No."

"What, then?"

"I am a Jew gentleman from Germany."

He lied, of course. He's a Levantine from Constantinople, with Greek, Armenian, Hindu, and perhaps some Turkish blood in his veins. This combination insures him good temper, capacity, and imagination—not a bad mixture for a courier. Besides, he is reasonably honest—not punctiliously so—not as to francs, perhaps, but certainly as to fifty-pound notes—that is, he was while he served me. Of course, I never had a fifty-pound note—not all at once—but if I had had I don't think he would have absorbed it—not if I had signed it on the back for identification and had kept it in a money-belt around my waist and close to my skin.

Those things, however, never trouble me. I don't want to make a savings-bank of Joseph. It is his vivid imagination that appeals to me, or perhaps the picturesqueness with which he puts things. In this he is a veritable master. His material, too, is not only uncommonly rich, but practically inexhaustible. He knows everybody; has travelled with everybody; has always kept one ear and one eye open even when asleep, and has thus picked up an immense amount of information regarding people and events—mostly his own patrons—the telling of which has served to enliven many a quiet hour while he sat beside me as I painted. Why, once I remember in Stamboul, when some Arabs had——

But I forget that I am following Joseph upstairs, and that his mission is to see that I am comfortably lodged at the Baur au Lac in Zurich.

When we reached the second floor Joseph met the porter emerging into the corridor with my large luggage. He had mounted the back stairs.

"Let me see Number 13, porter," cried Joseph. "Ah, yes—it is just as I supposed. Is it in that hole you would put my Lord—where there is noise all the time? You see that window, my Lord?" (By this time I had reached the two disputants and had entered the room.) "You remember, your Highness, that enormous omnibus in which you have arrived just? It is there that it sleeps." And Joseph craned his head out of the window and pointed in the direction of the court-yard. "When it goes out in the morning at seven o'clock for the train it is like thunder. The Count Monflot had this room. You should have seen him when he was awoke at seven. He was like a crazy man. He pulled all the strings out of the bells, and when the waiter come he had the hat-box of Monsieur the Count at his head."

Dismissing the apartment with a contemptuous wave of his hand, Joseph, with the porter's assistance, who had a pass-key, began a search of the other vacant rooms: half the hotel was vacant, I afterward learned; all this telegram and book business was merely an attempt to bolster up the declining days of a bad season.

"Number 21? No—it is a little better, but it's too near the behind stairs. It would be absurd to put his Lordship there. Number 24?"—here he looked into another room. "No, you can hear the grande baggage in the night going up and down. No, it will not do."

The manager, having disposed of the other members of the Emperor's household, now approached with a servile smile fitted to all parts of his face. Joseph attacked him at once.

"Is his Lordship a valet, Monsieur, that you should put him in such holes? Do you not know that he never wakes until ten, and has his coffee at eleven, and the omnibus, you know, sleeps there?" And he pointed outside. (Another Levantine lie: I am up at seven when the light is right.)

Here the porter unlocked another room and stood by smiling. He knew the game was up now, and had reserved this one for the last.

"Number—28! Ah, this is something like. Yes, my Lord, this will be quite right. La Contessa Moriarti had this room—yes, I remember." (Joseph never serves any woman below the rank of contessa.)

So I moved into Number 28, handed Joseph the keys, and the porter deposited my luggage and withdrew, followed by the manager. Soon the large and small trunks were disembowelled, my sponge hung on a nail in the window, and the several toilet articles distributed in their proper places, Joseph serving in the triple capacity of courier, valet, and chambermaid—the lame Englishman being out driving, and Joseph, therefore, having this hour to himself. This distribution, of course, was made in deference to my exalted rank and the ten-franc gold piece which he never fails to get despite my resolutions, and which he always seems to have earned despite my knowledge as to how the trick is performed.

Suddenly a crash sounded through the hall as if somebody had dropped a tray of dishes. Then came another, and another. Either every waiter in the house was dropping trays, or an attack was being made on the pantry by a mob.

Joseph, with a bound, threw back the door and we rushed out.

Just opposite my room was a small salon with the door wide open. In its centre stood a man with an iron poker in his hand. He was busy smashing what was left of a large mirror, its pieces littering the floor. On the sofa lay another man twice the size of the first one, who was roaring with laughter. Down the corridor swooped a collection of guests, porters, and chambermaids in full cry, the manager at their head.

"Two hundred and fifty francs, eh—for a looking-glass worth twenty francs?" I heard the man with the poker shout. "I blister with my gas-jet one little corner, and I must pay two hundred and fifty francs. I have ruined the mirror, have I, eh? And it must be thrown out and a new one put in to-morrow—eh?" Bang! bang! Here the poker came down on some small fragment still clinging to the frame. "Yes, it will come out [bang!]—all of it will come out."

The manager was now trying to make himself heard. Such words as "my mirror," "outrage," "Gendarme," could be heard above the sound of the breaking glass and the shrieks of the man on the sofa, who seemed to be in a paroxysm of laughter.

I looked on for a moment. Some infuriated lodger, angry, perhaps, at the overcharge in his bill, was venting his wrath on the furniture. It was not my mirror, and it was not my bill; the manager was present with staff enough to throw both men downstairs if he pleased and without my assistance, and so I turned and reentered my room. Two things fixed themselves in my mind: the alert figure, trim as a fencer's, of the man with the poker, and the laugh of the fat man sprawling on the lounge.

Joseph followed me into my room and shut the door softly behind him.

"Ah, I knew it was he. No other man is so crazy like that. He would break the head of the propriÉtaire just the same. That is an old swindle. That mirror has been cracked four—five—six times. The gas-jet is fixed so that you must crack it. All the mirrors like the one he burnt—it was only a little spot—go upstairs in the cheap rooms and new ones are brought in for such games. 'Most always they pay, but monsieur—it is not like him to pay. He has heard of the trick, perhaps—is it not delicious?" and Joseph's face widened into a grin.

"You know him, then?" I broke in.

"Know him?—oh, for many years. He is the great Doctor Barsac. He smashes everything he doesn't like. He smashed that old fat monsieur who made so much laugh. His name is Mariguy. He looks like a curÉ, does he not? But he is not a curÉ; he is an advocate. Barsac is from Basle, but Mariguy lives in Paris. Those two are never separated; they love each other like a man and a wife. There is a great medical convention here in Zurich, and Barsac has brought Mariguy with him to show him off. He put a new silver stomach in Mariguy last winter and is very proud of it. It is the great operation of the year, they say."

"What happened to the fat man, Joseph—was it an accident?"

"No—a duel. Barsac ran him through the belly with his sword."

"Permit me, my Lord—" And Joseph stepped to the window. "Yes, there comes the lame Englishman home from the drive. Excuse me—I will go and help him from his carriage." And Joseph bowed himself out backward.

* * * * * * *

II

Joseph's departure left my mind in an unsettled state. I hadn't the slightest interest in the great surgeon who had made the cure of the year, nor in the stout advocate with his nickel-plated digestive apparatus. Both of them might have broken every mirror in the hotel and have thrown the fragments out of the window, and the manager after them, without raising my pulse a beat. Neither did the medical convention nor the doctor's exhibit cause me a moment's thought. Such things were commonplace and of every-day occurrence. Only the dramatic in life appeals to so staid and gray an old painter as myself, and even Joseph's picturesque imagination could not imbue either one of the incidents of the morning with that desirable quality.

What really did appeal to me as I conjured up in my mind the picture of the fat man sprawled over the sofa-cushions roaring with laughter was the duel and the causes that led up to it. Why, if the man was his friend, had the doctor selected the hilarious advocate as an antagonist, and what could have induced the surgeon to pick out that particular section of his friend's surface in which to insert his sword.

That same night, in the smoking-room of the hotel, Joseph caught sight of me as he passed the open door and moved forward to my table. He had changed his dress of the morning, discarding the inflammatory waistcoat, and was now upholstered in a full suit of black. He explained that there were some friends of his living in the village who were going to have some music. The Englishman was in bed and asleep, and now that he was sure that I was comfortable, he could give himself some little freedom, with his mind at rest.

I motioned him to a seat.

He laid his silk hat and one glove on an adjoining table, spread his coat-tails, and deposited himself on the extreme edge of a chair—a position which would enable him to regain his feet at a moment's notice should any of my friends chance to join me. It is just such delicate recognition of my rank and lordly belongings that makes Joseph's companionship ofttimes a pleasure.

"You tell me, Joseph, that that crazy doctor stabbed the fat man in a duel."

"Not stabbed, my Lord! That is not the nice word. It was done so—so—so." And Joseph's wrist, holding an imaginary sword, performed the grand thrust in the air. "He is a master with the rapier. When he was at the Sorbonne he had five duels and never once a scratch. His honor was most paramount. He would fight with anybody, and for the smallest thing—if one man had a longer cane, or wore a higher hat, or took cognac in his coffee. Not for the grisette or for the cards in the face; not so big a thing as that; quite a small thing that nobody would remember a moment. And with his friends always—never with the man he did not before know."

"And was the fat man his friend?"

"His friend! Mon Dieu! they were like the brothers. One—two—five year, I think—all the whole time of the instruction. I was not there, of course, but a friend of mine tell me—a most truthful man, my friend."

"What was the row about? Cognac in his coffee?"

"I do not know—perhaps somethings. Yes, I do remember now. It was the cutting of the hair. Barsac like it short and Mariguy like it long. Barsac tried to cut the hair from Mariguy's head when he was asleep, and then it began. It was in that little wood at the bridge at SurÈsne that they went to fight. You know you turn to the right and there is a little place—all small trees—there it was.

"When they all got ready, there quickly arrive a carriage all dust, and the horse in a sweat, and out jumps an old lady—it was Mariguy's mother. Somebody had told her—not Mariguy, of course, but some student. 'Stop!' she cried; 'you do not my son kill. You, Barsac, you do nothing but fight!' Then they all talk, and Mariguy say to Barsac, 'It cannot be; my mother, as you see, is old. There is no one but me. If I am wounded, she will be in the bed with fright. If I am killed, she will be dead. It is my mother, you see, that you fight, not me.'

"Barsac take off his hat and bow to madame." (Joseph had now reached for his own and was illustrating the incident with an appropriate gesture.) "'Madame Mariguy,' said Barsac, 'I make ten thousand pardons. I respect the devotion of the mother,' and he went back to Paris, and Mariguy got into the carriage and go away with the mother."

"But, Joseph, of course that was not the last of it?"

"Yes, my Lord, until one year ago."

"Why, did they have another quarrel, Joseph?"

"No, not another—never but that one. They were for a long time what you call friends of the bosom. Every day after that they see each other, and every night they dine at the Louis d'Or below the Luxembourg. Then pretty soon the doctor, he have to take his degree and come back to Basle to live, and Monsieur Mariguy also have take his degree and become a great advocate in Paris. Every week come a letter from Barsac to Mariguy, and one from Mariguy to Barsac."

Joseph stopped in his narrative at this point, noticing perhaps some shade of incredulity across my countenance, and said parenthetically: "I am quite surprised, my Lord, that you have not this heard before. It was quite the talk of Paris at the time. No? Well, then, I will tell you everything as it did happen, for I do assure you that it is most exciting.

"All this time—it was quite ten years, perhaps fifteen—not one word does Monsieur Barsac say to Monsieur Mariguy about the insult of the long hair. All the time, too, they are together. For the summer they go to a little village in the Swiss mountains, and for the winter they go to Nice, and 'most every night they play a little at the tables. It was there I met them.

"One morning at Basle the doctor was at his table eating the breakfast when the newspaper is put on the side. He read a little and sip his coffee, and then he read a little more—all this, my Lord, was in the papers at the time—I am quite astonished that you have not seen it—and then the doctor make a loud cry, and throw the paper down, run upstairs, pack his bag, jump into a fiacre and go like mad to the station. The next morning he is in Paris, and at the house of his friend Mariguy. In three days they are at SurÈsne again—not in the little wood, but in the garden of Monsieur Rochefort, who was his second. It was against the law to go into the little wood to fight, so they took the nearest place to their old meeting—a small sentiment, you see, my Lord, which Monsieur the Doctor always enjoys.

"They toss up for the sun, and Monsieur Barsac he gets the shade. At the first pass, no one is hurt. At the second, Monsieur Barsac has a little scratch on his wrist, but no blood. The seconds make inspection most careful. They regret that the encounter must go on, but the honor is not yet satisfied. At the third, Monsieur Mariguy made a misstep, and Monsieur Barsac's sword go into Monsieur Mariguy's shirt and come out at Monsieur Mariguy's back.

"You can imagine what then take place. Doctor Barsac cry in a loud voice that his honor is satisfied, and the next moment he is on his knees beside his friend. Monsieur Mariguy is at once put in the bed, and for one—two—three months he is dead one day and breathe a little the next. Barsac never leave the house of his friend Monsieur Rochefort one moment—not one day does he go back to Basle. Every night he is by the bed of Monsieur Mariguy. Then comes the critical moment. Monsieur Mariguy must have a new stomach; the old one is like a stocking with a hole in the toe. Then comes the great triumph of Monsieur le Docteur. All Paris come out to see. To make a stomach of silver is to make one the fool, they say. The old doctors shake their heads, but Barsac he only laugh. In one more month Monsieur Mariguy is on his feet, and every day walks a little in the Bois near the house of Monsieur Rochefort. In one more month he run, and eat himself full like a boy.

"He is now no longer the great advocate. He is the example of Monsieur Barsac. That is why he is here at the medical convention. They arrived only yesterday and leave to-night. If you turn a little, my Lord, you can see into the other room. There they sit smoking.—Ah! do you hear? That is Monsieur Mariguy's laugh. Oh, they enjoy themselves! They have drank two bottles of Johannisberger already—twenty-five francs each, if you please, my Lord. The head waiter showed me the bottles. But what does Barsac care? He cut everything out of the insides of the Prince Morin one day last month, and had for a fee fifty thousand francs and the order of St. John."

I bent my head in the direction of Joseph's index finger and easily recognized the two men at the table. The smaller man, Barsac, was even more trim and alert-looking than when I caught a glimpse of him in the bedroom. As he sat and talked to Mariguy he looked more like an officer in the French army than a doctor. His hair was short, his mustache pointed, and his beard closely trimmed. He had two square shoulders and a slim waist, and talked with his hands as if they were part of his mental equipment. The other man, Mariguy, the "example," was just a fat, jolly, good-natured Frenchman, who to all appearance loved a bottle of wine better than he did a brief.

Joseph was about to begin again when I stopped him with this inquiry:

"There is one thing in your story, Joseph, that I don't quite get: you say they were students together?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"That the first duel—the one that the mother stopped—was fifteen years ago?"

"Quite true, my Lord."

"And that this last duel was fought a year ago, and that all that time they were together whenever they could be, and devoted friends?"

"Every word true, my Lord."

"Well, then, why didn't they fight before?"

Joseph looked at me with a curious expression on his face—one rather of disappointment, as if I had utterly failed to grasp his meaning.

"Fight before! It would have been impossible, my Lord. Barsac's honor was at the stake."

"And he must wait fifteen years," I asked with some impatience, "to vindicate it?"

"Certainly, my Lord—or twice that time if it was necessary. It was only when he read in the paper at the table of his breakfast that morning in Basle that he knew."

"What difference did that make?"

"Every difference, my Lord; Madame Mariguy, the mother, was only the day before dead."

SIMPLE FOLK