s. The
sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of
all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living
cyclopaedia.

[Illustration: THE WAGON.]

Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes,
learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our
interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than
once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of
his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports.
In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so obese,
that a man's lifetime may be spent in exercising round one of them,
there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to estimate their
relativity, except among the two classes called by the world idlers
and ignorants--the poets and the Bohemians.

Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his account
in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He carried
parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too heavy for
the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a good grace,
and the two mutually aided each other on the errand. Thanks to his
horse, the void left by his failure to learn a trade was filled up by
a daily and regular task: what was better, an affection had crept into
his heart. He loved his charge, and his charge loved him.

This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment then
for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came along--a season
of cholera. In the villages where Joliet's business lay the doors just
beginning to be hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where the
good townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now saw
Contagion.

[Illustration: DINNER-TIME!]

If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited for
better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his horse
and took a resolution.

He had never been a mendicant. "Beggars don't go as hungry as I have
gone," said he. "But what will you have? Nobility obliges. My father
was a gentleman. I have broken stones, but never the _devoirs_ of my
order."

He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had lain.
The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was before him.
As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his horse, which he
was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a woman whom he took
in the obsc