vest on
his arm, silk hat cocked over his left eye, the lamp-light shining on
the buckles of his suspenders. Dear old governor!--dear, vulgar
incarnation of those fast vanishing pioneers who invented
civilization, finding none; who, self-taught, unashamed taught their
children the only truths they knew, that the nation was worthy of all
good, all devotion, and all knowledge that her sons could bring her to
her glory that she might one day fulfil her destiny as greatest among
the great on earth.

The whining Breton bagpipe droned in my ears; the dancers flew past;
laughter and cries arose from the tables in the square where the
curate of St. Julien stood, forefinger wagging, soundly rating an
intoxicated but apologetic Breton in the costume of Faouet.

I was tired--tired of it all; weary of costumes and strange customs,
weary of strange tongues, of tinsel and mummers, and tarnished finery;
sick of the sawdust and the rank stench of beasts--and the vagabond
life--and the hopeless end of it all--the shabby end of a useless
life--a death at last amid strangers! Soldiers in red breeches,
peasants in embroidered jackets, strolling mountebanks all tinselled
and rouged--they were all one to me.... I wanted my own land.... I
wanted my own people.... I wanted to go home ... home!--and die, when
my time came, under the skies I knew as a child,... under that
familiar moon which once silvered my nursery windows....

I turned away across the bridge out into the dark road. Long before I
came to the smoky, silent camp I heard the monotonous roaring of my
lions, pacing their shadowy dens.

XVII

THE CIRCUS

A little after sunrise on the day set for our first performance, Speed
sauntered into my dressing-room in excellent humor, saying that not
only had the village of Paradise already filled up with the peasantry
of Finistere and Morbihan, but every outlying hamlet from St. Julien
to Pont Aven was overflowing; that many had even camped last night
along the roadside; in short, that the country was unmistakably
aroused to the importance of the Anti-Prussian Republican circus and
the Flying Mermaid of Ker-Ys.

I listened to him almost indifferently, saying that I was very glad
for the governor's sake, and continued to wash a deep scratch on my
left arm, using salt water to allay the irritation left by Aicha's
closely pared claws--the vixen.

But the scratch had not poisoned me; I was in fine physical condition;
rehearsa