And here, as this (as far as I can see) is the last of
Aristide's adventures I have to relate, let me make an honest and
considered statement:--

During the course of an interesting and fairly prosperous life, I have
made many delightful Bohemian, devil-may-care acquaintances, but among
them all Aristide stands as the one bright star who has never asked me
to lend him money. I have offered it times without number, but he has
refused. I believe there is no man living to whom Aristide is in debt.
In the depths of the man's changeling and feckless soul is a principle
which has carried him untarnished through many a wild adventure. If
he ever accepted money--money to the Provencal peasant is the
transcendental materialised, and Aristide (save by the changeling
theory) was Provencal peasant bone and blood--it was always for what he
honestly thought was value received. If he met a man who wanted to take
a mule ride among the Mountains of the Moon, Aristide would at once have
offered himself as guide. The man would have paid him; but Aristide, by
some quaint spiritual juggling, would have persuaded him that the
ascent of Primrose Hill was equal to any lunar achievement, seeing that,
himself, Aristide Pujol, was keeper of the Sun, Moon and Seven Stars;
and the gift to that man of Aristide's dynamic personality would have
been well worth anything that he would have found in the extinct volcano
we know to be the moon.

"The only thing I would suggest, if you would allow me to do so," said
I, "is not to try to make the fortune of Messrs. Dulau & Co. by some
dazzling but devastating _coup_ of your own."

He looked at me in his bright, shrewd way. "You think it time I
restrained my imagination?"

"Exactly."

"I will read The Times and buy a family Bible," said Aristide.

A week after he had taken up his work in the City, under my friend
Blessington, I saw the delighted and prosperous man again. It was a
Saturday and he came to lunch at my house.

"_Tiens!_" said he, when he had recounted his success in the office, "it
is four years since I was in England?"

"Yes," said I, with a jerk of memory. "Time passes quickly."

"It is three years since I lost little Jean."

"Who is little Jean?" I asked.

"Did I not tell you when I saw you last in Paris?"

"No."

"It is strange. I have been thinking about him and my heart has been
aching for him all the time. You must hear. It is most important." He
lit a cigar and began.