s attempt of the Vicomte to check him.

"You should have seen Babette in the burlesque as Phryne at the
Varietes--_une merveille, mon cher!_" he exclaimed, addressing the
sous-lieutenant on his right, and he blew a kiss to the ceiling. "The
complexion of a rosebud and amusing! Ah--la! la!"

"I hear her debts ran close to a million," returned the lieutenant.

"She was feather-brained," continued the _bon vivant_, with a blase
shrug. "She was a good little quail with more heart than head! Poor
Babette!"

"Take care!" cautioned the Vicomte pointblank, as the Baron re-entered
with the box of milder Havanas.

And thus the talk ran on among these men of the world who knew Paris as
well as their pockets; and so many Babettes and Francines and other
careless little celebrities whose beauty and extravagance had turned
peace and tranquillity into ruin and chaos.

At last the jolly breakfast came to an end. We rose, recovered our guns
from the billiard-table, and with fresh courage went forth again into
the fields to shoot until sunset. During the afternoon we again saw Le
Bour, but he kept at a safe distance watching our movements with
muttered oaths and a vengeful eye, while we added some twenty-odd
partridges to the morning's score.

* * * * *

Toward the end of the afternoon, a week later, at Pont du Sable, Tanrade
and the cure sat smoking under my sketching-umbrella on the marsh. The
cure is far from a bad painter. His unfinished sketch of the distant
strip of sea and dunes lay at my feet as I worked on my own canvas while
the sunset lasted.

Tanrade was busy between puffs of his pipe in transposing various
passages in his latest score. Now and then he would hesitate, finger the
carefully thought out bar on his knee, and again his stub of a pencil
would fly on through a maze of hieroglyphics that were to the cure and
myself wholly unintelligible.

Suddenly the cure looked up, his keen gaze rivetted upon two dots of
figures on bicycles speeding rapidly toward us along the path skirting
the marsh.

"Hello!" exclaimed the cure, and he gave a low whistle. "The gendarmes!"

There was no mistaking their identity; their gold stripes and white duck
trousers appeared distinctly against the tawny marsh.

The next moment they dismounted, left their wheels on the path, and came
slowly across the desert of wire-grass toward us.

"_Diable!_" muttered Tanrade, under his breath, and instantly o