ar blue eyes, who walks with
the stride of a man, and who looks at you squarely, at times
disdainfully--even when drunk.

[Illustration: sabots]

* * * * *

[Illustration: a Normande]

CHAPTER SIX

THE BARON'S PERFECTOS

Strange things happen in my "Village of Vagabonds." It is not all fisher
girls, Bohemian neighbours, romance, and that good friend the cure who
shoots one day and confesses sinners the next. Things from the outside
world come to us--happenings with sometimes a note of terror in them to
make one remember their details for days.

Only the other day I had run up from the sea to Paris to replenish the
larder of my house abandoned by the marsh at Pont du Sable, and was
sitting behind a glass of vermouth on the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix
when the curtain rose.

One has a desire to promenade with no definite purpose these soft
spring days, when all Paris glitters in the warm sun. The days slip by,
one into another--days to be lazy in, idle and extravagant, to promenade
alone, seeking adventure, and thus win a memory, if only the amiable
glance of a woman's eyes.

I was drinking in the tender air, when from my seat on the terrace I
recognized in the passing throng the familiar figure of the Brazilian
banker, the Baron Santos da Granja. The caress of spring had enticed the
Baron early this afternoon to the Boulevard. Although he had been
pointed out to me but once, there was no mistaking his conspicuous
figure as he strode on through the current of humanity, for he stood
head and shoulders above the average mortal, and many turned to glance
at this swarthy, alert, well-preserved man of the world with his keen
black eyes, thin pointed beard and moustache of iron gray. From his
patent-leather boots to his glistening silk hat the Baron Santos da
Granja was immaculate.

Suddenly I saw him stop, run his eyes swiftly over the crowded tables
and then, though there happened to be one just vacated within his
reach, turn back with a look of decision and enter the Government's
depot for tobacco under the Grand Hotel.

I, too, was in need of tobacco, for had not my good little
maid-of-all-work, Suzette, announced to me only the day before:

"Monsieur, there are but three left of the big cigars in the thin box;
and the ham of the English that monsieur purchased in Paris is no more."

"It is well, my child," I had returned resignedly, "that ham could