inebleau filled
with pity, horror, indignation, and despair.

In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the driving-seat, to guard
the treasure; while the Doctor, with a singular, slightly tipsy airiness
of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands with
garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of old
experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costly
fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a
preposterous cane for himself, and a kepi of the newest fashion for the
boy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched his
telegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising a
visit on the morrow, and generally pervaded Fontainebleau with the first
fine aroma of his divine good-humour.

The sun was very low when they set forth again; the shadows of the forest
trees extended across the broad white road that led them home; the
penetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen, like a cloud of
incense, from that broad field of tree-tops; and even in the streets of
the town, where the air had been baked all day between white walls, it
came in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music. Half-way home, the last
gold flicker vanished from a great oak upon the left; and when they came
forth beyond the borders of the wood, the plain was already sunken in
pearly greyness, and a great, pale moon came swinging skyward through the
filmy poplars.

The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor talked. He spoke of the
woods, and the wars, and the deposition of dew; he brightened and babbled
of Paris; he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories of the political
arena. All was to be changed; as the day departed, it took with it the
vestiges of an outworn existence, and to-morrow's sun was to inaugurate
the new. "Enough," he cried, "of this life of maceration!" His wife
(still beautiful, or he was sadly partial) was to be no longer buried;
she should now shine before society. Jean-Marie would find the world at
his feet; the roads open to success, wealth, honour, and posthumous
renown. "And oh, by the way," said he, "for God's sake keep your tongue
quiet! You are, of course, a very silent fellow; it is a quality I gladly
recognise in you--silence, golden silence! But this is a matter of
gravity. No word must get abroad; none but the good Casimir is to be
trusted; we shall probably dispose of the vessels in England."

"But are