hundred
thousand _cafes_--_mon Dieu!_ how thirsty I have been there!--and I
would make every English work-girl do her hair properly, and I would
ordain that everybody should laugh three times a day, under pain of
imprisonment for life."

"I am afraid, Mr. Pujol," remarked Mr. Ducksmith, seriously, "you would
not be acting as a constitutional monarch. There is such a thing as the
British Constitution, which foreigners are bound to admire, even though
they may not understand."

"To be a king must be a great responsibility," said Mrs. Ducksmith.

"Madame," said Aristide, "you have uttered a profound truth." And to
himself he murmured, though he should not have done so, "_Nom de Dieu!
Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!_"

After lunch they drove to Versailles, which they inspected in the same
apathetic fashion; then they returned to the hotel, where they
established themselves for the rest of the day in the airless salon, Mr.
Ducksmith reading English newspapers and his wife knitting a grey
woollen sock.

"_Mon vieux!_" said Aristide to Bocardon, "they are people of a
nightmare. They are automata endowed with the faculty of digestion. _Ce
sont des gens invraisemblables._"

Paris providing them, apparently, with no entertainment, they started,
after a couple of days, _Aristide duce et auspice Pujol_, on their
railway tour through France, to Aristide a pilgrimage of unimaginable
depression. They began with Chartres, continued with the Chateaux of the
Loire, and began to work their way south. Nothing that Aristide could do
roused them from their apathy. They were exasperatingly docile, made few
complaints, got up, entrained, detrained, fed, excursioned, slept, just
as they were bidden. But they looked at nothing, enjoyed nothing (save
perhaps English newspapers and knitting), and uttered nothing by way of
criticism or appreciation when Aristide attempted to review the wonders
through which they had passed. They did not care to know the history,
authentic or Pujolic, of any place they visited; they were impressed by
no scene of grandeur, no corner of exquisite beauty. To go on and on, in
a dull, non-sentient way, so long as they were spared all forethought,
all trouble, all afterthought, seemed to be their ideal of travel.
Sometimes Aristide, after a fruitless effort to capture their interest,
would hold his head, wondering whether he or the Ducksmith couple were
insane. It was a dragon-fly personally conducting two moles throu