said my master reflectively, "is that one is not able to have any personal concern in the most interesting event in one's career. If you could even follow your own funeral and have a chance of weeping for yourself! You are never so important as when you are a corpse – and you miss it all. I have a good mind not to die. It is either the silliest or the wisest action of one's life; I wonder which."
Presently the girl came down the passage of the café, stood for a moment in the doorway, and seeing Paragot advanced to the table.
"You are very kind, Monsieur," she said, "and for what you have done I thank you from my heart."
"It was very little," said my master. "Asticot, why do you not give Mademoiselle your chair? Your manners are worse than those of Narcisse. Mademoiselle, do me the pleasure of being seated."
She sat down, her feet apart, peasant fashion, her hands in her lap.
"If I had not lost the twenty francs he would not have died," she said dejectedly.
"He would have died if you had brought him here in a carriage. He had aneurism of the heart, the doctor says. He might have died any moment the last ten years. How old was he?"
"Seventy, eighty, ninety – how should I know?"
"But he was your grandfather."
"Ah, no, indeed, Monsieur," she replied in a more animated manner. "He was not a relative. My mother was poor and she sold me to him three years ago."
"Why that is like me, Master!" I cried, vastly interested.
"My son," said he in English, "that is one of the things that must be forgotten. And then, Mademoiselle?" he asked in French.
"Then he taught me to play the zither and to dance. I am sorry he is dead. Dame, oui, par exemple! But I do not weep for him as for a grandfather. Oh, no!"
"And your mother?"
"She died last year. So I am all alone."
He asked her what she thought of doing for her livelihood. She shrugged her shoulders with the resignation of her class.
"I can always earn my living. There are brasseries, cafés-concerts in all the towns – I am fairly well known. They will give me an engagement. Il faut passer par là comme les autres."
"You must go through it like the others?" repeated my master. "But you are very young, my poor child."
"I am eighteen, Monsieur, I know I shall not make a fortune. I am not pretty enough even when I paint, and my figure is heavy. That is what Père Paragot used to complain of."
"What was his name?" asked my master, pricking up his ears.
"Berzélius Paragot – and he took the name of Nibbidard, which means 'no luck' – so he loved to call himself Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot."
"Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot," mouthed my master joyously. "I would give anything for a name like that!"
"It is yours if you like to take it," she said quite seriously. "No one will want it any more."
"Little Asticot of my heart," said he, "what do you think of it?"
It struck me as a most aristocratically romantic appellation. I was used to his aliases by this time. He had long ceased to call himself "Pradel," and what was our surname for the moment I am now unable to recollect.
"You look like 'Paragot,' Master," said I, and, in an inexplicable way, he did – as I have before remarked. He called me a psychometrical genius and enquired the name of the young lady.
"Amélie Duprat, Monsieur," she said. "But pour le métier– we must have professional names for the cafés – Père Paragot called me 'Blanquette de Veau.'"
"Delicious!" cried he.
"So everyone calls me Blanquette," she explained gravely. There was a silence. Paragot – he really assumed the name from this moment – refilled his pipe. The belated peasants, having finished their wine, clattered out of the café, and took off their hats as they passed us.
"Life is very hard, is it not, Messieurs?" remarked Blanquette. It seemed to be her favourite philosophic proposition. She sighed. "If Père Paragot had only lived to play at the wedding tomorrow!"
"What then?"
"I should have had ten francs."
"Ah!" said my master.
"First I lose my louis, and now I lose my ten francs! ah! Sainte Vierge de Miséricorde!"
It was heart-rending. Sometimes they received more than the stipulated fee at these village weddings. They passed the hat round. If the guests were mellow with good wine, which makes folks generous, they often earned double the amount. And they always had as much as they liked to eat, and could take away scraps in a handkerchief.
"And good wholesome nourishment, Monsieur. Once it was half a goose."
And now there was nothing, nothing. Blanquette did not believe in the bon Dieu any longer. She buried her face in her arms and wept. Paragot smoked helplessly for a few moments. I, unused to women's tears, felt the desolation of the race of Blanquette de Veau overspread me. But that I considered it to be beneath my dignity as a man, I should have wept too.
Suddenly Paragot brought his fist down on the table and started to his feet. Blanquette lifted a scared wet face, dimly seen in the half light.
"Tonnerre de Dieu!" cried he, "If you hold so much to your ten francs and half a goose, I myself will come with you to Chambéry tomorrow and fiddle at the wedding."
"You, Monsieur?" she gasped.
"Yes, I. Why not? Do you think I can't scrape catgut as well as Père Paragot?"
He walked to and fro declaring his musical powers in his boastful way. If he chose he could rip out the hearts of a dead Municipal Council with a violin, and could set a hospital for paralytics a-dancing. He would have fiddled the children of Hamelin away from the Pied Piper. Didn't Blanquette believe him?
"But yes, Monsieur," she said fervently.
"Ask Asticot."
My faith in him was absolute. To my mind he had even understated his abilities. The experience of the disillusioning years has since caused me to modify my opinions; but Paragot's boastfulness has not lessened him in my eyes. And this leads to a curious reflection. When a Gascon boasts, you love him for it; when a Prussian does it, your toes tingle to kick him to Berlin. His very whimsical braggadocio made Paragot adorable, and I am at a loss to think what he would have been without it.
"Of course," said he, "if you are proud, if you don't want to be seen in the company of a scarecrow like me, there is nothing more to be said."
Blanquette humbly repudiated the charge of pride. Her soul was set on her ten francs and she didn't care how she got them. She accepted Monsieur's generous offer out of a full heart.
"That's sense," said my master. "We shall rehearse at daybreak."
CHAPTER VI
Dawn found us all in a field some distance from the café – Paragot, Blanquette, Narcisse, the zither,
