to spin it into the web of
conversation. I myself ventured an inquiry or two, for all but the
most ignorant speak French of a sort. Monsieur Dorn accepted a glass of
_pequet_ at my request (a fire-water, for a dose of which one halfpenny
is charged, and upon which the unaccustomed stranger may intoxicate
himself madly at an outlay of five-pence), and the fat and stately old
fellow told me all about the origin and meaning of the pious form the
village was then preparing to fulfil. He made the kindest allowance
for my limited powers of speech, and bounteously fed my native sense of
retiring humility with patronage.

The door of the _cafe_ was open to the mild, fir-scented December air,
though a crackling fire burnt noisily in the thin-ribbed stove. Lil
made occasional excursions to the open doorway, looking out upon the
passers-by with a keen alertness. She had some time returned from one of
these inspections, and had curled herself at her master's feet, when I
heard a singular and persistent tapping upon the unclothed floor, and
looking round caught sight of my friend Schwartz, who was making a
crouching and timid progress toward us, and was wagging his cropped tail
with such vehemence that it sounded on the boards like a light hammer
on a carpeted flooring. At first I fancied that he recognised me, and
I held out to him an encouraging hand, of which he took no notice. That
air of propitiatory humility which I had seen in him when we had first
encountered on Lorette was exaggerated to a slavish adulation. There
is no living creature but a dog who would not have been ashamed to
show such a mixture of transport and self-depreciation. He fawned, he
writhed, he rapped his tail upon the floor in a sustained _crescendo_.
The dumb heart had no language for its own delight and humility. Anybody
who takes pleasure in dogs has seen the _sort_ of thing scores
and scores of times. It was the quality of intensity which made it
remarkable in Schwartz.

Lil, for whom this display of joy and humbleness was made, was
altogether unmoved by it. She was not merely regardless of it, but
ostentatiously disdainful. She took a coquettish lady's-maidish amble to
the door, passing Schwartz by the way, and yawned as she looked out upon
the street. Schwartz fawned after her to the door, and with a second
yawn she repassed him, and returned to lie at the feet of the fat old
_gendarme_. The absurd little drama of coquetry and worship went on
until