stide's heart left his body and rolled at the feet of Mademoiselle
Stephanie. It was a way with Aristide's heart. It was always doing that.
He was of Provence and not of Peckham Rye or Hoboken, and he could not
help it.

Aristide called on Madame Coquereau, who entertained him with sweet
Frontignan wine, dry sponge cakes and conversation. After a while he was
invited to dinner. In a short space of time he became the intimate
friend of the house, and played piquet with Madame Coquereau, and grew
familiar with the family secrets. First he learned that Mademoiselle
Stephanie would go to a husband with two hundred and fifty thousand
francs. Aristide's heart panted at the feet of Mademoiselle Stephanie.
Further he gathered that, though Monsieur Coquereau was a personage of
great dignity and importance in civic affairs, he was as but a little
child in his own house. Madame Coquereau held the money-bags. Her son
had but little personal fortune. He had reached the age of forty-five
without being able to marry. Marriage unauthorized by Madame Coquereau
meant immediate poverty and the testamentary assignment of Madame
Coquereau's fortune to various religious establishments. None of the
objects of Monsieur Coquereau's matrimonial desire had pleased Madame
Coquereau, and none of Madame Coquereau's blushing candidates had caused
a pulse in Monsieur Coquereau's being to beat the faster. The Mayor held
his mother in professed adoration and holy terror. She held him in
abject subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's
sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for
Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "_Oui, Monsieur_" and "_Non,
Monsieur_," in a crescendo of maddening demureness.

So passed the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of
the Mayor's office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would
have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the
blush, and in the evening played piquet with Madame Coquereau, while
Mademoiselle Stephanie, model of modest piety, worked pure but nameless
birds and flowers on her embroidery frame. Monsieur le Maire, of course,
played his game of manilla at the cafe, after dinner, and generally
came home just before Aristide took his leave. If it had not been for
the presence of Mademoiselle Stephanie, it would not have been gay for
Aristide. But love gilded the moments.

On the first evening of the Carnival,