with a doll into which Hedwige had
savagely run hatpins so that the stuffing came out, I consoled the
weeping infant with a new doll and the assurance that Hedwige was the
spitefullest cat as yet evolved from a feline sex. I had no notion at
the time of the reason for Hedwige's viciousness. But now I fancy she
must have acted according to mediaeval superstition and used the doll as
Joanna's hated effigy. I remember that the next time I saw her I
criticised her straight Teutonic fringe and fanfaronaded on the
captivating frizziness of Joanna's hair. The wonder is that Hedwige did
not run hatpins into _me_. The murderer's widow of Prague was built of
sterner stuff; she cared not a hempen strand for Joanna, a pale
consumptive doxy, according to her picturing, who had jilted me for an
eminent swell-mobsman in London."

I spent many happy hours over these scraps, building up the fantastic
fairy tale of Paragot's antecedents, and should have gone on reading
them for an indefinite time had not Paragot one day discovered me. It
was then that I learned the sacrosanctity of private papers.

"I thought, my little Asticot," said he, bending his blue eyes on me, "I
thought you were a gentleman."

Only Paragot could have had so crazy a thought. I could not be a
gentleman, I reflected, till I had a gold watch-chain. However Paragot
expected me to be one without the seal and token of outward adornments,
and I promised faithfully to mould myself according to his
expectations.

"How much of this nightmare farrago have you read?"

"I know it all by heart, Master," said I.

He took off his old hat and threw it on the bed, and ran his fingers
through his hair perplexedly.

"My son," said he at last, "if you were just a common boy I should make
you go on your bended knees and lift up your hand and swear that you
would not reveal to a living soul the mysteries which these papers
contain, and then I should send you to dwell for ever among the
tripe-plates. But I see before me a gentleman, a scholar and an artist
and I will not submit him to such an indignity."

He put his hand on my head and looked at me in kind irony.

"I will never tell no one, Master," I promised.

"Anyone," he corrected.

"Anyone, Master," I repeated meekly.

"You will wipe it all out of your memory."

I was habitually truthful with Paragot, because he never gave me cause
to lie.

"I can't, Master," said I, thinking of my dreams of Joanna.

The seriousn