ry.

"The Comte de Verneuil is dead," he answered.

"Are you going to his funeral?"

"In these?" he cried holding up the lemon kids, "and this cravat?"

I noticed that he wore a floppy purple tie adorned with yellow spots,
outside the lapels of his coat. It required more than two glances to
take in all his detail.

"Besides," he added, "my distinguished patient was buried a fortnight
ago."

He looked at me with an amused smile, enjoying my mystification like a
child.

"You didn't know me."

"No, Master." I rubbed my eyes. "In fact I scarcely recognise you now."

"That is because I am again Gaston de Nerac," said he magnificently.

I had an idea that he must have come into the family fortune. But what
had the death of the Comte de Verneuil to do with it? I picked up my bag
again and walked with him to the exit. The hurrying crowd of passengers
by my train and of clerks and work-people pouring from suburban
platforms rendered conversation impossible.

At the station gates Paragot stood and watched the brisk life that
swarmed up and down the Rue Saint-Lazare and the Rue du Havre. Paris
awakens a couple of hours earlier than London. Clerks hurried by with
flat leather portfolios under their arms. Servants trotted to market, or
homewards, with the end of a long golden loaf protruding from their
baskets. Work-girls sped by in all directions. Omnibuses lumbered along
as at midday. Before the great cafes opposite, the tables were already
set out on the terrace and the awnings lowered, and white-aproned
waiters stood expectant. The whole scene was bathed in the gay morning
sunshine.

"It is good to be alive, Asticot," said my master. "It is good to be in
Paris. It is good to get up early. It is good to see the world's work
beginning. It is also good to feel infernally hungry and to have the
means of satisfying one's desires. But as, in the absence of Blanquette,
my establishment is disorganised, I think we had better have our
breakfast at a _cremerie_ than in the Rue des Saladiers. We can talk
over our coffee."

I accompanied him across the street in a muddled condition of intellect,
casting sidelong glances at him from time to time, as if to assure
myself that he was real. Having just come from an English environment
where the niceties of costume were as rigidly observed as the niceties
of religion, I could not help marvelling at Paragot's attire. He looked
like a tenth-rate French provincial actor made up to r