nce. I took it for granted as I took many things
in those unspeculative days. The actual whirl of Paris caught me and
left me little time for conjecture. I wrote once or twice to Joanna; but
my letters were egotistical outpourings; the mythological picture at
Menilmontant inspired sheets of excited verbiage. She replied in her
pretty sympathetic way, but gave me little news of Paragot. It was
hardly to be expected that she should write romantically, like a young
girl foolishly in love, gushing to a bosom friend. Paragot himself, who
disliked pen, ink, and paper, merely sent me the casual messages of
affection through Joanna. He took the view of the Duenna in "Ruy Blas"
as to the adequacy of the King's epistle to the Queen: "Madame. It is
very windy and I have killed six wolves. Carlos." What more was
necessary? asked the Duenna. So did Paragot.

When I was with Blanquette I avoided the subject of the impending
marriage as much as possible. She looked forward with dull fatalism to
the day when another woman would take the master into her keeping and
her own occupation would be gone.

"But, Blanquette, we shall go on living together just as we are doing
now," I cried in the generosity of youth.

"And when a woman comes and takes you too?"

I swore insane vows of celibacy; but she laughed at me in her
common-sense way, and uttered blunt truths concerning the weaknesses of
my sex.

"Besides, my little Asticot," she added, "I love you very much; you know
that well; but you are not the Master."

Once I suggested the possibility of her marrying some one else. There
was a cheerful _quincaillier_ at the corner of the street who, to my
knowledge, paid her assiduous attentions. He was evidently a man of
substance and refinement, for a zinc bath was prominently displayed
among his hardware. But Blanquette's love laughed at tinsmiths. She who
had lived on equal terms with the Master and myself (I bowed my
acknowledgment of the tribute) to marry a person without education? _Ah!
mais non! Au grand nom! Merci!_ She was as scornful as you please, and
without rhyme or reason plucked a bunch of Christmas roses from a jug on
the table and threw them into the stove. Poor _quincaillier_! There was
nothing for it but to _se fich' a l'eau_--to chuck herself into the
river. That was the end of most of our conversations on the disastrous
subject.

* * * * *

It was the end of a talk on one November evenin