certainly
something in being born to ride in a coach, even if the coach be
gambled away or drunk up.

Jacques Haret greeted me cordially, as I say, but with good-natured
condescension. He began to tell me that he had the finest child
actress in his troupe he had ever seen. "So tragic, so moving, so
graceful, so droll, so natural; she could, in two years more, wrest
the laurels from the brow of Mademoiselle Lecouvreur herself!" So he
declared, again whacking me on the back.

I was not much interested in his child actress, but bluntly asked him
how he got the use of Madame Riano's garden.

"The easiest thing in the world," he said, laughing. "I went to
her--proved that in 1456 one Jacques Haret, my ancestor, had married
into the noble family of Kirkpatrick, and on the strength of that
relationship asked to set up my theater here. She agreed promptly,
only stipulating that she should see and hear nothing of it. I told
her she could not see without looking, nor hear without listening, and
she screeched out laughing and told me to go my ways and try to be
respectable."

"I hope you have taken Madame Riano's advice," I said dryly.

"In truth I have been obliged to. There are too many fellows like me
in Paris now. I can no longer get clothes and food and wine by telling
a merry tale and singing a ribald song. And, besides, I got a hint
from Cardinal Fleury, that old busybody, who manages a good deal more
than the king's conscience."

"What do you call a hint?" I asked.

"Oh, well, old Fleury sent me word if I did not find some respectable
employment he would have me cool my heels a while in the prison of the
Chatelet--not the Bastille, mind you, where Voltaire and all the wits
and dandies are sent--but to the Chatelet, the prison of the common
malefactors. The cardinal's message is what I call a delicate hint.
However, I may make my fortune yet. The Duc de Lauzun was a mere
provincial like me, and was often in straits--yet he married the
king's niece, and made her pull his boots off for him."

I looked at the fellow in admiration. His evil life had not dimmed his
eye or his smile, his courage or his impudence.

The crowd was still increasing, and there must have been a hundred
persons present by that time. Lafarge, the bad actor from the Comedie
Francaise was hanging about, and I was the more convinced he was bent
on mischief. Jacques Haret had gone off--the performance was about
beginning. A white cloth, fastened