nted picture postcards ought to have his statue on the top
of the Eiffel Tower. The millions of headaches he has saved! People go
to places now not to exhaust themselves by seeing them, but to buy
picture postcards of them. The rest of the party, as I said, were deep
in picture postcards. Mademoiselle and I promenaded outside. We often
promenaded outside when the others were buying picture postcards," he
remarked, with an extra twinkle in his bright eyes. "And the result? Was
it my fault? We leaned over the parapet. The wind blew a confounded
_meche_--what do you call it----?"

"Strand?"

"Yes--strand of her hair across her face. She let it blow and laughed
and did not move. Didn't I say she was a little witch? If there's a
Provencal ever born who would not have kissed a girl under such
provocation I should like to have his mummy. I kissed her. She kept on
laughing. I kissed her again. I kissed her four times. At the beginning
of the fourth kiss out came her father from the postcard shop. He waited
till the end of it and then announced himself. He announced himself in
such ungentlemanly terms that I was forced to let the whole party,
including the adorable little witch, go on to Pau by themselves, while
I betook my broken heart to the Cafe de l'Univers."

"And there you found consolation?"

"I told my sad tale. Amelie listened and called the manager to take
charge of the _comptoir_, and poured herself out a glass of Frontignan.
Amelie always drinks Frontignan when her heart is touched. I came the
next day and the next. It was pouring with rain day and night--and
Carcassonne in rain is like Hades with its furnaces put out by human
tears--and the Cafe de l'Univers like a little warm corner of Paradise
stuck in the midst of it."

"And so that's how it happened?"

"That's how it happened. _Ma foi!_ When a lady asks a _galant homme_ to
marry her, what is he to do? Besides, did I not say that the Cafe de
l'Univers was the most prosperous one in Carcassonne? I'm afraid you
English, my dear friend, have such sentimental ideas about marriage.
Now, we in France----_Attendez, attendez!_" He suddenly broke off his
story, lurched forward, and gripped the back of the front seat.

"To the right, man, to the right!" he cried excitedly to McKeogh.

We had reached the point where the straight road from Aigues-Mortes
branches into a fork, one road going to Montpellier, the other to Nimes.
Montpellier being to the west, McKeogh ha