gentlemen
in cafes did not do. At all events she was penetrated with the
consciousness of a loftier mind and spirit, and she contented herself
even as I did with being his devoted slave.

Often too she spoke of her own ambitions. If she were rich she would
have a little house of her own. Perhaps for company she would like
someone to stay with her. She would keep it so clean, and would mend all
the linen, and do the cooking, and save to go to market, would never
leave it from one year's end to the other. A good sleek cat to curl up
by the fireside would complete her felicity.

"But Blanquette!" I would cry. "The sun and the stars and the high road
and the smell of spring and the fields and the freedom of this life--you
would miss them."

"_J'aime le menage, moi_," she would reply, shaking her head.

Of all persons I have ever met the least imbued with the vagabond
instinct was the professional vagabond Blanquette de Veau.

Sometimes, instead of sleeping, Paragot would talk to us from the
curious store of his learning, always bent on my education and desirous
too of improving the mind of Blanquette. Sometimes it was Blanquette who
slept, Narcisse huddled up against her, while Paragot and I read our
tattered books, or sketched, or discussed the theme which I had written
overnight as my evening task. It was an odd school; but though I could
not have passed any examination held by the sons of men, I verily
believe I had a wider culture, in the truest sense of the word, than
most youths of my age. I craved it, it is true, and I drank from an
inexhaustible source; but few men have the power of directing that
source so as to supply the soul's need of a boy of sixteen.

Well, well--I suppose Allah Paragot is great and Mahomet Asticot is his
prophet.

* * * * *

We wandered and fiddled and zithered and tambourined through France
till the chills and rains of autumn rendered our vagabondage less merry.
The end of October found us fulfilling a week's engagement at a
brasserie on the outskirts of Tours. Two rooms over a stable and a
manger in an empty stall below were assigned to us; and every night we
crept to our resting places wearied to death by the evening's work.

I have always found performance on a musical instrument exhausting in
itself: the tambourine, for instance, calls for considerable physical
energy; but when the instrument, tambourine, violin or zither, is
practised for severa