and carefully, his heart in his mouth at every lurch of the
afflicted automobile, fearful lest the child should be precipitated from
its slippery resting-place. But, alas! he did not proceed far. At the
end of a kilometre the engine stopped dead. He leaped out to see what
had happened, and, after a few perplexed and exhausting moments,
remembered. He had not even petrol to offer to the baby, having
omitted--most feather-headed of mortals--to fill up his tank before
starting, and forgotten to bring a spare tin. There was nothing to be
done save wait patiently until another motorist should pass by from whom
he might purchase the necessary amount of essence to carry him on to
Salon. Meanwhile the baby would go breakfastless. Aristide clambered
back to his seat, took the child on his knees, and commiserated it
profoundly. Sitting there on his apparently home-made vehicle, in the
midst of the unearthly silence of the sullen and barren wilderness,
attired in his shaggy goat-skin cap and coat, he resembled an up-to-date
Robinson Crusoe dandling an infant Friday.

The disposal of the child at Salon would be simple. After having it fed
and tended at an hotel, he would make his deposition to the police, who
would take it to the Enfants Trouves, the department of State which
provides fathers and mothers and happy homes for foundlings at a cost to
the country of twenty-five francs a month per foundling. It is true that
the parents so provided think more of the twenty-five francs than they
do of the foundling. But that was the affair of the State, not of
Aristide Pujol. In the meanwhile he examined the brat curiously. It was
dressed in a coarse calico jumper, very unclean. The striped blanket was
full of holes and smelled abominably. Some sort of toilet appeared
essential. He got down and from his valise took what seemed necessary to
the purpose. The jumper and blanket he threw far on the pebbly waste.
The baby, stark naked for a few moments, crowed and laughed and
stretched like a young animal, revealing itself to be a sturdy boy about
nine months old. When he seemed fit to be clad Aristide tied him up in
the lower part of a suit of pyjamas, cutting little holes in the sides
for his tiny arms; and, further, with a view to cheating his hunger,
provided him with a shoe-horn. The defenceless little head he managed to
squeeze into the split mouth of a woollen sock. Aristide regarded him in
triumph. The boy chuckled gleefully. Then Arist