-_c'est ca--nous
allons voir les caves_--the cellars--where all the champagne is.
_Karrascho!_"

At this moment M. VESQUIER returns. He will just take us through the
offices to his private rooms. Clerks at work everywhere. Uncommonly
like an English place of business: not much outward difference between
French clerks in a large house like this and English ones in one of
our great City houses; only this isn't the City, but is, so to speak,
more Manchesterian or Liverpoolian, with the immense advantage of
being remarkably clean, curiously quiet, and in a pure and fresh
atmosphere. I don't clearly understand what M. VESQUIER's business is,
but as he seems to take for granted that I know all about it, I trust
to getting DAUBINET alone and obtaining definite information from him.
Are they VESQUIER's caves we are going to see? "No," DAUBINET tells me
presently, quite surprised, at my ignorance; "we are going to see _les
caves de Popperie_--Popp & Co., only Co.'s out of it, and it's all
POPP now."

"Now then, Gentlemen," says the _gerant_ of POPP & Co, "here's a
_voiture_. We have twenty minutes' drive." The Popp-Manager points
out to me all the interesting features of the country. DAUBINET amuses
himself by sitting on the box and talking to the coachman.

"It excites me," he explains, when requested to take a back seat
inside--though, by the way, it is in no sense DAUBINET's _metier_
to "take a back seat,"--"it excites me--it amuses me to talk to a
_cocher. On ne peut pas causer avec un vrai cocher tous les jours._"
And presently we see them gesticulating to each other and talking
both at once, DAUBINET, of course, is speaking English and various
other languages, but as little French as possible, to the evident
bewilderment of the driver. DAUBINET is perfectly happy. "Petzikoff!
Blass the Prince of WAILES!" I hear him bursting out occasionally.
Whereat the coachman smiles knowingly, and flicks the horses.

* * * * *

THE TWO WINDS.

(_A FAIRY STORY FOR THE SEASON OF 1891. IMITATED--AT A DISTANCE--FROM
HANS ANDERSEN'S CELEBRATED TALE OF "THE FOUR WINDS."_)

[Illustration]

* * * * *

The Mother of the Winds (acting as _locum tenens_ for her Clerk of the
Weather, who, sick of his own unseasonable work, was off to spend his
annual holiday with Mr. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in the Pacific Isles),
received the desperately damp, dishevelled, blown-about, and alm