nquette for ten francs a
week and she will be as happy as Marie Antoinette while haymaking at
the Petit Trianon. She will occupy herself with geese and turkeys while
I shall be riding my donkey."

"Master," said I, "I only have one fear. You will adopt that donkey and
bring it to live in the Rue des Saladiers."

Paragot laughed, drained his glass of absinthe and ordered another.

CHAPTER XV

THUS the three of us were again separated. Blanquette was enjoying
herself amongst the pigs and ducks of La Haye, whence she wrote letters
in which her joy in country things mingled with anxiety as to the
neglected condition of the Master; I led a pleasant but somewhat nervous
life in Somersetshire, spending hours in vain attempts to reconcile the
cosmic views of Paragot and an English vicar, and learning sometimes
with hot humiliation the correctitudes of English country vicarage
behaviour; and Paragot, his long legs dangling on each side of his
donkey, rode, as I thought, picturesquely vagrant, through the leafy
byways of France.

A fortnight after my arrival, however, he informed me by letter of his
resolve to stay in Paris. He had failed to find an ass of the true
vagabond character. The ideal ass he sought should be a companion as
well as a means of locomotion. He would not take an urban donkey into
the country against its will. To force any creature, man, woman, or ass,
out of the groove of its temperament were a crime of which he could not
be guilty. Then, again, Narcisse did not enter into the spirit of the
pilgrimage. He laid his head along his forepaws and glowered sullenly
instead of barking with enthusiasm. Again, when he announced his
intention of leaving Paris, Hercule groaned aloud and Madame Boin wept
so profusely that sitting beneath her counter he had to put up a
borrowed umbrella. Cazalet too, and a few others too poor for railway
fares, were staying in town. Also the Cafe Delphine had spoiled him for
the horrible alcohols of wayside cafes. And, lastly, what did it matter
where the body found itself so long as the soul had its serene
habitations?

The letter depressed me. I was beginning to see Paragot with the eyes of
a man. I felt that this inability to carry out an inspiration was a sign
of decay. The springs of action had weakened. Though the spirit thirsted
for sweet things, habit chained him to the squalor of the Cafe Delphine.
When the quiet Somersetshire household knelt around the drawing-ro