nor wiser; and the best she
could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and
juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp that I escaped
into the streets and the keen morning air. Morning? why, how tired of
it she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? It
is fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify
our lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a
number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower
of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private
somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old
folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life.

*****

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat. 'I am
afraid,' said he, 'that monsieur will think me altogether a beggar;
but I have another demand to make upon him.' I began to hate him on the
spot. 'We play again to-night,' he went on. 'Of course I shall refuse
to accept any more money from monsieur and his friends, who have been
already so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something truly
creditable; and I cling to the idea that monsieur will honour us
with his presence. And then, with a shrug and a smile: 'Monsieur
understands--the vanity of an artist!' Save the mark! The vanity of an
artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged,
tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman and the
vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect!

*****

Time went on, and the boy's health still slowly declined. The Doctor
blamed the weather, which was cold and boisterous. He called in his
CONFRERE from Burron, took a fancy for him, magnified his capacity, and
was pretty soon under treatment himself--it scarcely appeared for what
complaint. He and Jean-Marie had each medicine to take at different
periods of the day. The Doctor used to lie in wait for the exact moment,
watch in hand. 'There is nothing like regularity,' he would say, fill
out the doses, and dilate on the virtues of the draught; and if the boy
seemed none the better, the Doctor was not at all the worse.

*****

'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase--to avoid excess.
Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess. Human law in this matter imitates at a great distance her
provisions; and