t monarch and his spouse, rolling over the roads,
circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris, and
carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their utensils,
their bed, their oven, their all.

From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of barter.
At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of the house
kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a ditch. The
hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their sultan prudently
pecked about for food. At the first appeal they re-entered their cage.

[Illustration: FRANCINE.]

At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a most
piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye,
lame and wild. For devotion and good sense his match could be found
nowhere. Like his horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his
sleeve, Joliet had picked the collie up on the road.

The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian's address made a
change necessary. Little Francine's dowry was provided by my humorous
acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.

With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the roads.

[Illustration: "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"]

Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
home-made character of Joliet's chateau. It became the centre of my
botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like the
sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni's sketches, and sold flowers to
the passers-by.

* * * * *

Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his old
capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I
found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
roundabout trips to Marly.

But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?

"Francine?" asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering whom I could
mean by such a name. "You mean my wife? Poor thing! She is dead."

"I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet."

"Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
godmother. It was ten years ago."

"And you have not seen her since?"

"Yes--yes--two years back. She has gone again."

"To her godmother?"

"No."

"Why so?"

"Her godmother would not receive her. Don't wring