The meeting with Eloise so disturbed my mind that I had quite forgotten one thing—Franzius. I had promised to see him after the ball—an impossible promise to fulfil considering the way the affair ended.

When I awoke at six of this bright May morning, which was the herald of a new chapter of my life, Franzius and his old fiddle, one under the arm of the other, entered my mind directly the door of consciousness was opened by Joubert's knock at the door of my room.

I had told him to waken me at six. So, though I had fallen asleep directly my head touched the pillow, I had slept only two hours when the summons came to get up.

But I did not care. I was as fresh as a lark. Youth, good health, the absence of any earthly trouble, and the spirit of May, which peeped with the sun into the courtyard of the HÔtel de Chatellan, made life a thing worth waking up to.

But it was different with Joubert. He was yawning, and as sulky as any old servant could possibly be, as he put out my clothes and drew up the blind.

"Joubert," said I, sitting up in bed, "do you remember, nine years ago, when we were staying at the Schloss Lichtenberg, a little girl in a white dress and a blue scarf, and white pantalettes with frills to them?"

"Mordieu!" grumbled Joubert, putting out my razors. "Do I remember? Well, what about her?"

"I met her last night."

Joubert, who, with a towel over his arm, was just on the point of going into the bathroom adjoining, wheeled round.

"Met her! And where?"

"At a students' ball." Then I told him the whole business; told him of the ruin of the Felicianis, of the death of the Countess, of Eloise's forlorn position, and of the plans I had half made for her future; to all of which he listened without enthusiasm. "But that is not all," said I. And told him of my meeting with Franzius, the wandering musician whose music had held me in the gallery of the Schloss, whilst the assassin had been at work plunging his dagger into the pillow of my bed.

"You met him, and he brought you to the place where you met her," said Joubert when I had finished. "Mark me, something evil will come of this. Mon Dieu! the Lichtenbergs have not done with us yet. On the night before the General fought with Baron Imhoff he came to the Pavilion—you remember that night? He took me outside in the dark—you remember he took me out? And what said he? Ah, he said a lot. He said: 'Joubert, even if I fall to-morrow the Lichtenbergs will not have done with us. Fate, like an old damned mole'—those were his words—'has been working underground in the families of the Saluces and Lichtenbergs for three hundred years and more. She's showing her nose, and what will be the end of it the Virgin in heaven only can tell. If I fall, Joubert,' said he, 'I trust you to keep my boy apart from that child of Von Lichtenberg's they call Carl. Keep him apart from anyone who has ever had anything to do with the Lichtenbergs.' And look you," continued Joubert, "the first night you have liberty to go and amuse yourself, what happens? You meet two of the lot that were at the Schloss: one leads you to the other, and now you are going to set the girl up in the Pavilion. Think you I would mind if you filled the Pavilion with your girls, filled the chateau, stuffed the moat with them? Not I, but there you are: wagon-loads, army corps of girls to choose from, and you strike the one of all others—— Peste! and what's the use of my talking? You were ever the same, self-willed, just the same as when you were a child you would have your box of tin soldiers beside you in the carriage instead of packed safely in the baggage—just the same!" And so forth and so on, flinging my childish vagaries in my teeth just as a mother or an old nurse might have done.

"All right, Joubert," said I, dressing; "there is no use in arguing with you. I am going to offer the Pavilion as a home to Mademoiselle Feliciani. That is settled. No evil can come to me for helping the unfortunate."

"Yes; that's what those sort of people call themselves," grumbled Joubert. "Good name, too, for her."

"So," I finished, "order a carriage to the door as quick as it can be got, and come with me to Etiolles, for I want to get the Pavilion in order."

"Monsieur's orders as to the carriage shall be attended to," said the old man with fine sarcasm, considering that he had turned "Monsieur" over his knee and spanked him with a slipper often enough in the past. "But as for me, I will not go; no, I will not go!"

He vanished into the bathroom to prepare my bath.

When I was dressed I ordered Potirin, the concierge, to send a man to the Closerie de Lilas, and, if the place was still standing after the riots of last night, to obtain Franzius' address. Then, when the front door was opened for me, I found the carriage waiting, and on the box, beside the coachman—Joubert!

I smiled as I got in, and we started.

It was an open carriage; and in the superb May morning Paris lay white and almost silent; the Rue St. HonorÉ was deserted, and a weak wind, warm and lilac perfumed, blew from the west under a sky of palest sapphire. We passed Bercy, we passed through Charenton and Villeneuve St. George's, the poplars whitening to the west wind, the villages wakening, the cocks crowing, and the sun flooding all the holiday-world of May with tender tints. The white houses, the vineyards, the greenswards embanking the sparkling Seine: how beautiful they were, and how good life was! How good life was that morning in May, effaced now by so many weary years, effaced from time but not from my recollection where it lies vivid as then, with the Seine sparkling, and the wind blowing the poplar-trees that have never lost a leaf!

The road took us by the skirt of the forest ringing with the laughter and the chatter of the birds.

Old Fauchard's married daughter was in charge of the Pavilion. I had not seen the place for a long time; it had been redecorated by order of my guardian, and the old gentleman used it occasionally for luncheon-parties; a charming rural retreat where the Amy FÉrauds and Francine Volnays of the ThÉÂtre Montparnasse enjoyed themselves, plucking bulrushes from the ponds in the forest, and chasing with shrill laughter the echoes of the Pompadour-haunted groves.

The little dining-room had a painted ceiling—a flock of doves circling in a blue sky. The kitchen was red tiled, and clean as a Dutch dairy. The bedrooms—bright and spotless, and simply furnished—were perfumed with the breath of the forest coming through the always open windows; the hangings were of chintz, flower-sprinkled, and light in tone. If May herself had chosen to build and furnish a little house to live in, she could not have improved on the Pavilion of Saluce, furnished as it was by a Parisian upholsterer at the direction of a Parisian boulevardier.

I had breakfasted in the kitchen—there was nothing to be done, the place was in perfect order—and, telling Fauchard's daughter (Madame Ancelot) that I would return that afternoon with a lady who would take up her abode at the Pavilion for an indefinite time, I returned to Paris, dropping Joubert in the Rue St. HonorÉ, and telling the coachman to take me to the Rue du Petit Thouars.