o the details of my
outfit. I can see him now, shaggy and shabby, fingering stuffs with the
anxious solicitude of a woman at a draper's counter.

"That's a nice country suiting. It expresses its purpose, suggests the
right gaiety of mood. What says _Arbiter elegantiarum_?"

"Don't you think it might make the cart-horses shy?" says Ewing, and
Paragot drops reluctantly the thunder-and-lightning check that has
seized his unaccustomed fancy.

My wardrobe included a dress suit.

At Paragot's bidding, I donned it when it arrived, and on my way to him
transfixed the Rue des Saladiers with awe and wonder. Upstairs, Paragot
twirled me slowly round as if I were a mannequin on a pivot, and called
Blanquette to admire, and uttered strange oaths in the dozen languages
of which he was master. Was I not beautiful?

Blanquette admitted that I was. All that was most beautiful; without a
doubt. I resembled the stylish people who went to expensive funerals.
In fact, she added with a sigh, I was too beautiful.

She saw her brother Asticot transfigured into the resplendent gentleman
beyond her sphere, and sighed womanlike at my apotheosis. She could no
longer walk by my side, bareheaded, in the streets. The dress suit was a
symbol of change detested by woman. She gave the matter however her
practical attention.

"He ought to have patent-leather shoes," she observed.

"That's true," said Paragot, pulling his beard reflectively. "Ewing
should have mentioned it; but I have noticed a singular lack of
universality in the sons of English clergymen."

"And now my son," said he on the eve of my departure, "I too have the
nostalgia of green fields and the smell of hay and manure and the fresh
earth after rain. I have at last an inspiration. As this confounded
ankle will not let me walk, I shall hire a donkey and let him take me
whither he will. Narcisse shall accompany me."

"And Blanquette, will she trudge beside the donkey?"

"I have arranged for Blanquette to go into villegiatura at the farm of
La Haye."

"With Monsieur and Madame Dubosc?"

"Your logical faculty does you credit, my son. They are most excellent
people, although they could not tell me how many towers the Cathedral of
Chartres possessed. You will remember an excursion we made on Sunday,
and I lectured learnedly on the archaeology of the fabric. My learning
impressed them less than my skill in curing a pig according to a
Dalmatian recipe. They will board and lodge Bla