journal, and
raised my price for contributions to _Le Fou Rire_. Bread and butter
were assured. There was never prouder youth than I, when one August
morning I started from Paris for Chartres, with fifty superfluous pounds
in my pocket which I determined to restore to Paragot.

The old Paragot of the high roads, hairy and bronzed, and wearing a
great straw hat with wide brim turned down, met me at the little local
station. He forgot that he was half British and almost hugged me. At
last I had come--it was my third visit--at last I had torn myself away
from that _sacre_ Paris and its flesh-pots and its paint-pots and its
artificialities.

"Nothing is real in Paris, whether it be the smile on the painted lady's
lips or the dream of the young poet. Here, in the midst of God's fields,
there is no pretending, no shamming, no lying, none of your confounded
idealism. All is solid, _mon gars_. Solid like that," and he thumped his
chest to illustrate the argument.

"Bucephale, too?" I queried with a laugh, as we fetched up beside the
most ancient horse in the Department, drooping between the shafts of a
springless cart. Needless to say, Bucephale had been rechristened in his
extreme old age.

"He is a living proof," cried Paragot, "of the solidity _rerum
agrestium_. Look at him! Shew me a horse of his age in Paris. The Paris
horses, like Youth in the poem, grow pale and spectre thin and die of
premature decay. Here, _mon petit_," said he giving a sou to a blue
bloused urchin who was restraining the impetuous Bucephale from a wild
gallop over the Eure et Loire, "when you have spent that come to La Haye
and I will give you another."

He threw my bag into the cart, and we took our places on the plank that
served as a seat.

"_En route_, Bucephale!" cried Paragot, gathering up the reins. "Observe
the kindly manners of the country. If I had addressed him like your
Paris cabman with a '_Hue Cocotte!_' it would have wounded his
susceptibilities."

Bucephale started off jog-trot down the straight white road edged with
poplars, while Paragot talked, and the sun blazed down upon us from a
cobalt sky. All around the fertile plain laughed in the sunshine--a
giant, contented laugh, like that of its broad-faced, broad-hipped
daughters who greeted Paragot as we raced by at the rate of five miles
an hour. Did I ever meet a Paris horse that went this speed? asked
Paragot, and I answered him truthfully, "Never."

We stopped in a white-