anure for Madame Dubosc. We earned two
francs. Do you remember?"

"I remember that my back ached terribly afterwards," said I laughing.

"Ah, but the ease and comfort in your soul! Perhaps there's nothing much
the matter with yours yet, is there?"

"I think it's all right," I answered.

"Something must be wrong with mine," he remarked meditatively, "because
at a crisis in my life I haven't had an inspiration. It is sluggish. I
want a soul pill."

This time it was I who had an inspiration--one of terrifying audacity.

"Master, perhaps absinthe isn't good for it," said I all in a breath.

"Infant Solomon," replied Paragot ironically, "where have you gathered
such a store of wisdom? Have you a scrap of paper in your pocket?"

"Yes, Master," said I, producing a sketch-book and preparing to tear out
a leaf. He stopped my hand.

"Leave it in. All the better. As I am sure you don't remember the
passage from Cicero's _De Natura Deorum_ which I quoted to you some time
ago, since you are unacquainted with the Latin tongue, I will dictate it
to you, and you can learn it by heart and say it like a Pater or an Ave
morning and evening."

I wrote down at his dictation the passage concerning the impossibility
of judging between the false and true. And that is how I was able to set
it down in its proper place in a previous chapter.

"Do you know why I have made you do this?"

"Yes, Master," said I, for I knew that he referred to the sale of Joanna
for ten thousand pounds.

"Circumstance flattens a man out sometimes," said he, "like a ribbon--as
if he had been carefully ironed by a hot steam roller. I suppose a
flattened man can't have an inspiration. I am my own tomb-stone and you
can chalk across me '_Hic jacet qui olim Paragotus fuit_.'"

His tone was so dejected that I felt a sinking at my heart, a
scratchiness in my nose and a wateriness in my eyes. I suffered the
pangs of suppressed sympathy. What could a boy of nineteen say or do in
order to restore rotundity to a flattened hero?

"Years ago," he continued after a pause, "I found the world a Lie and I
started off to chase the wild goose of Truth. I captured nothing but a
taste for alcohol which brought me eventually beneath the steam roller.
Were it not the silliest legend invented by man, I should say to you
'Beware of the steam roller.' But if a man's sober he can see the thing
himself; if he isn't, he can't read the warning. I can only tell you to
be unalcohol