he ended by rejoicing with his friend, and made
a sacrifice of the happiness that he had known during those four months
that he had had Pons all to himself. Mental suffering has this immense
advantage over physical ills--when the cause is removed it ceases
at once. Pons was not like the same man that morning. The old man,
depressed and visibly failing, had given place to the serenely contented
Pons, who entered the Presidente's house that October afternoon with the
Marquise de Pompadour's fan in his pocket. Schmucke, on the other hand,
pondered deeply over this phenomenon, and could not understand it; your
true stoic never can understand the courtier that dwells in a Frenchman.
Pons was a born Frenchman of the Empire; a mixture of eighteenth century
gallantry and that devotion to womankind so often celebrated in songs of
the type of _Partant pour la Syrie_.

So Schmucke was fain to bury his chagrin beneath the flowers of his
German philosophy; but a week later he grew so yellow that Mme. Cibot
exerted her ingenuity to call in the parish doctor. The leech had fears
of icterus, and left Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the
Latin word for an attack of the jaundice.

Meantime the two friends went out to dinner together, perhaps for
the first time in their lives. For Schmucke it was a return to the
Fatherland; for Johann Graff of the Hotel du Rhin and his daughter
Emilie, Wolfgang Graff the tailor and his wife, Fritz Brunner and
Wilhelm Schwab, were Germans, and Pons and the notary were the only
Frenchmen present at the banquet. The Graffs of the tailor's business
owned a splendid house in the Rue de Richelieu, between the Rue
Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the Rue Villedo; they had brought up their
niece, for Emilie's father, not without reason, had feared contact
with the very mixed society of an inn for his daughter. The good tailor
Graffs, who loved Emilie as if she had been their own daughter, were
giving up the ground floor of their great house to the young couple, and
here the bank of Brunner, Schwab and Company was to be established. The
arrangements for the marriage had been made about a month ago; some time
must elapse before Fritz Brunner, author of all this felicity, could
settle his deceased father's affairs, and the famous firm of tailors
had taken advantage of the delay to redecorate the first floor and to
furnish it very handsomely for the bride and bridegroom. The offices of
the bank had been fit