Papa Bouchard

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Chapter I

ON a certain day in June, 1901, a cataclysm occurred in the quiet apartment of Mademoiselle Céleste Bouchard, in the Rue Clarisse, the quietest street in the quietest part of Paris. This cataclysm consisted of the simultaneous departure, or rather the levanting, of the entire masculine element in the excellent old lady’s household. And this masculine element had been so admirably trained! Monsieur Paul Bouchard, in particular, ten years his sister’s junior, was reckoned a model man. Mademoiselle could truly say that during Monsieur Bouchard’s fifty-four years of life he had never, until then, given her a moment’s anxiety. All the elderly ladies of the Bouchards’ acquaintance pointed with admiration to Monsieur Paul.

“Look!” they said; “such a good brother! Mademoiselle boasts that although he is fifty-four years of age he is still as obedient to her as he was at fifteen. So prosperous and respected as an advocate, too!” And all these ladies sighed because they had not succeeded in petticoating a brother or a husband as Mademoiselle Bouchard had petticoated the prosperous and respected Monsieur Paul Bouchard.

Pierre, the husband of Élise, Mademoiselle Bouchard’s maid for thirty years, was as well disciplined as his master, for he was Monsieur Paul’s valet. He had never had a will of his own since the day, thirty years before, when Élise had sworn before the altar to love, honor and obey him.

The third masculine creature in the dovecote of the Rue Clarisse was the parrot, Pierrot. Nobody knew exactly how old Pierrot was, but he was supposed to have arrived at years of discretion. Mademoiselle had spent a dozen patient years in curing Pierrot of a propensity to bad language, and she had taught him a great variety of moral maxims that made him a model bird, as Monsieur Bouchard was a model man and Pierre a model servant. It is true that Léontine de Meneval, Monsieur Paul’s ward, married to a handsome scapegrace captain of artillery, had amused herself with teaching the bird a number of phrases, such as “Bad boy Bouchard” and others reflecting on “Papa Bouchard,” as she called him. And Pierrot had picked up these naughty expressions with astonishing quickness. But Léontine had always been regarded as incorrigible by her guardian and his sister, although they really loved her, and since her marriage she had become gayer, merrier and more irresponsible than ever. This deterioration both Monsieur and Mademoiselle Bouchard laid at the door of her husband, Captain de Meneval, with his laughing eyes and devil-may-care manner; with whom, however, aside from these characteristics, not the slightest fault could be found. He was devoted to Léontine, and if the two chose to lead a life as merry and unreflecting as that of the birds in the shadowy forests, nobody could stop them. Papa Bouchard—as the artillery captain had the impudence to call him—did, it is true, keep a tight hand on Léontine’s fortune, and would allow her only half her income, at which Léontine grumbled and incited Captain de Meneval to grumble, too. But Papa Bouchard, having full power as trustee, met their complaints and protests with a proposition to cut down their allowance to one-fourth of their income, at which the two young people grew frightened, and desisted.

Now, there dwells in every masculine breast a germ of lawlessness that no discipline ever invented can wholly kill. Man or parrot, it is the same. After having been brought up in the way he should go, he longs to go it. Such was the case with Pierrot, with Pierre and with Monsieur Bouchard.

It was the bird that first made a dash for liberty. After ten years of irreproachable conduct, Pierrot, on that June morning, suddenly jumped from the balcony, where he had been walking the railing in the most sedate manner, and scuttled off in the direction of the Alcazar d’Été, the Ambassadeurs, the Moulin Rouge, and the very gayest quarter of Paris.

Monsieur Bouchard was sitting on the balcony at the time. He was rather younger looking, with his clean-shaven face and wiry figure, than most men of his age, but thanks to Mademoiselle Céleste, he patronized the same tailors that had made for his father and his grandfather. Their cut and style indicated that they had been tailors to Cardinal Richelieu and others of that time, and they dressed Monsieur Bouchard in coats and trousers and waistcoats of the pliocene age of tailoring. As for his hats, they might have been dug out of Pompeii, for any modernity they had, and the result was that Monsieur Bouchard’s back and legs looked about seventy-five, while his face looked little more than forty.

Instead of giving the alarm when Pierrot trotted gaily off, Monsieur Bouchard felt a strange thrill of sympathy with the runaway.

“Poor devil!” thought he. “No doubt he is sick of the Rue Clarisse—tired of the moral maxims—weary of the whole business. He isn’t so young as he was, but there’s a good deal of life in him still”—Pierrot was just scampering around the corner—“and he wants to see life.”

“There is a psychologic moment for everything,” so Otto von Bismarck said. The parrot’s escape made a psychologic moment for Monsieur Bouchard, and quietly putting on his hat, and telling Mademoiselle Bouchard that he was going to a meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians at St. Germains, and afterward for a stroll through the museum in the town, made straight for a street in the neighborhood of the Champs Élysées. He remembered seeing in that quarter a handsome new apartment house lately finished and thoroughly modern. He had for curiosity’s sake entered it. He had seen furnished apartments so bright, so light, so cheery, so merry that he longed to establish himself there. He had gone back once, twice, thrice, each time more infatuated with the place. To-day he walked in, selected a vacant apartment, and in ten minutes had taken a lease of it for a year.

And then he had to go back to the Rue Clarisse to tell about it.

Of course, he had not thrown off the yoke of thirty years without secret alarms, agitations and palpitations. He walked up and down the Rue Clarisse twice, his heart thumping loudly against his ribs, before he could screw up resolution to enter. He was nerved, however, by the recollection of the apartment he had just seen; it had been given up the day before by a young journalist, named Marsac, who had left various souvenirs of a very pleasant life there. The street was such a bustling, noisy street—and the Rue Clarisse was so quiet, so quiet! In the new street there were two music halls in full view and generally in full blast, gay restaurants blazing with lights, where all sorts of delicious, indigestible things to eat were to be had, and such an atmosphere of jollity and movement! Monsieur Bouchard quivered with delight like a schoolboy as he thought of it, and so he marched in to take his life in his hand while breaking the news to his sister Céleste.

Mademoiselle Bouchard, a small, prim, devoted, affectionate, obstinate creature, was sitting in the drawing-room, bemoaning with Élise the loss of Pierrot. Élise, a hard-featured, hard-working creature, had such a profound contempt for the other sex that it was a wonder she ever brought herself to marry one of them. She was saying to Mademoiselle Bouchard:

“Depend on it, Mademoiselle, that ungrateful Pierrot will never come back of his own accord. If he had been a she bird, now—but Pierrot is like the rest of his sex. It’s in them to run away—and run away they will.”

“He has had a quiet, peaceful home in the Rue Clarisse for seventeen years,” wailed poor Mademoiselle Bouchard.

“That’s reason enough for him to run away. What does he care about a quiet, peaceful home? He wants to be strutting around in some restaurant, drinking and swearing and turning night into day. They’re all like that. My Pierre, now, is just as ready to run away as was Pierrot, but I shall keep an eye on him.”

With an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées.

And then Monsieur Bouchard walked in, with an affectation of case and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées, whereat it seemed to poor Mademoiselle Céleste as if the Louvre had moved itself over into the Bois de Boulogne and the Seine had suddenly begun to flow backward. Of course, Monsieur Bouchard had arranged a plausible tale by which his hegira was to appear the most natural and laudable thing in the world. Most men are inventive enough in the matter of personal justification. But it is one thing to make up and tell a plausible tale, and another to get that tale believed. Élise openly sniffed at the theory advanced by Monsieur Bouchard that it was absolutely necessary for him to live nearer the courts. Also, that he was really inspired by a desire to save Mademoiselle the annoyance of clients coming and going.

“You remember, my dear Céleste, you complained of Captain de Meneval the last time he was here. You said he talked and laughed so much, and chucked Élise under the chin——”

“But that was a trifle; you know there’s no real harm done,” protested Mademoiselle Bouchard.

“Why? Because I won’t let him,” said Monsieur Bouchard, with the determined air a man assumes when he wishes to impress a woman with a great notion of the power he holds over another man. “It is because he has to deal with me—a man born with his shirt on, as the peasants say. Otherwise, there might be harm done. De Meneval is very saucy. When I reminded him the other day of the promise I exacted from him when he married Léontine, that he wouldn’t go into debt, the fellow grinned and said he was in love with Léontine, and would have promised to eat his grandmother if I had made that a condition.”

“But in reference to this strange notion of yours about taking an apartment at your time of life——”

“That’s just it, my dear,” cried Monsieur Bouchard. “I am too old not to have a separate establishment.”

“Too old!” cried Mademoiselle, who had never ceased to regard the model Monsieur Bouchard as a wild sprig of flamboyant youth; “you mean too young!”

Monsieur Bouchard was tickled. What gentleman of fifty-four is not pleased at the assumption that he is merely a colt, after all?

Mademoiselle Bouchard anxiously scrutinized her brother. There was a lawless gleam in his eye—an indefinable something that is revealed when a man has the bit between his teeth and does not mean to let it go. Mademoiselle, good, innocent soul, was not devoid of sense, and she saw her only game was to play for time.

“Very well, Paul. If you will desert the Rue Clarisse, I will look about and get you an apartment near by, and I will let you have Pierre——”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Monsieur Bouchard, hastily. He had no mind to have a domestic Vidocq in his new quarters. “I couldn’t think of robbing you of Pierre. Thirty years you have had him. You could not get on without him.”

“Yes, I could.”

“I can’t accept the sacrifice.”

“I make it cheerfully for your sake.”

“It would be cruel to Pierre.”

“He will make the sacrifice.”

“That he will,” interrupted Élise, with the freedom of an old servant. “He will caper at the notion of leaving the Rue Clarisse for some wild, dissipated place such as Monsieur Paul has selected.”

“Monsieur Paul has not selected a place, Élise,” replied Mademoiselle, with severity.

“But—but I have, my dear Céleste. It is No. 25 Rue Bassano. I have taken it for a year. In fact, the van is coming to-day for my personal belongings. Pierre will see to them. And, my dear, I have a busy day before me. I am due at the meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians at St. Germains at one o’clock, and I can barely make the train. Afterward I shall spend some instructive hours in the museum—I shall see you to-morrow—” and Monsieur Bouchard literally ran out of the room.

“There he goes!” apostrophized Élise to Mademoiselle Céleste, who was almost in tears. “That’s the way Pierrot scampered off, and Pierre wants only half a wink to run off, too, to the Rue Bassano.”

“Élise,” cried Mademoiselle, “you are most unjust, and your suspicions of Pierre will be disproved. Ring the bell.”

Pierre appeared.

He was about Monsieur Bouchard’s age, height and size—medium in all respects—clean shaven, like his master, and wore a cast-off suit of Monsieur Bouchard’s, as it was the morning and his livery was religiously saved for the afternoon. He was, in short, a very good replica of Monsieur Bouchard.

Mademoiselle Bouchard stated the case to him, carefully giving Monsieur Paul’s bogus reasons.

“The Rue Bassano is a very gay and noisy place, Pierre, as you know, with a great many theatres and restaurants about, and much passing to and fro. It will be a change from the Rue Clarisse.”

“Mademoiselle, I know it,” Pierre replied, showing the whites of his eyes. “I would much rather remain in this decent, quiet street.”

Mademoiselle turned to Élise with an I-told-you-so air, and said, “No doubt you would, Pierre—a man of your excellent character.”

“Yes, Mademoiselle. The theatres and music halls must be very objectionable—and the restaurants. I suppose the waiters would laugh at me when I went to fetch Monsieur’s dinner of boiled mutton and rice.”

“Yes; but if it were your duty to go with Monsieur?”

“Duty, Mademoiselle, has ever been a sacred word with me. Though but a servant, I have always revered my duty,” replied the virtuous Pierre. He backed and filled for some time longer, as servants commonly do—and as some of their masters and mistresses do sometimes—but finally, in response to Mademoiselle Bouchard’s pleading that he would not desert Monsieur Bouchard at this critical moment in his career, consented to brave the dangers of the gay Rue Bassano. But when Mademoiselle hinted at the horrid possibility that Monsieur Bouchard might be beguiled into sowing a late crop of wild oats, suddenly a grin flashed for a moment on Pierre’s stolid countenance—flashed and disappeared so instantly that Mademoiselle Bouchard was not sure he grinned at all. If he did, however, it must have been at the notion that the staid, the correct Monsieur Bouchard could ever sow wild oats. Mademoiselle Céleste blushed faintly at the thought that she reckoned such a thing possible.

Pierre then backed out of the door, wiping two imaginary tears from his eyes. Once outside with the door shut, this miscreant did a very strange thing. He stood on one leg, whirled around with the greatest agility for his years, and softly whispered, “Houp-là!”

That very day came the moving. The van arrived, and Monsieur Bouchard’s books, papers and clothes were put into it by Pierre, who seemed to be in the deepest dejection. Mademoiselle gave him minute and tearful directions about Monsieur Paul’s diet, exercise and clothing. He was to see that Monsieur Paul kept regular hours, and was to report in the Rue Clarisse the smallest infraction of the rules of living which might occur in the Rue Bassano; and Pierre promised with a fervor and glibness that would have excited the suspicions of anyone less kindly and simple-minded than good old Mademoiselle. He did indeed awaken a host of doubts in the mind of his faithful Élise, who had not been married for thirty years without finding out a few things about men. And when he wept at telling her good-bye for a single day, she told him not to be shedding any of those crocodile tears around her.

Pierre, mounted on the van that carried away Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings, drove off, looking as melancholy as he could; but as soon as he turned the corner he began whistling so merrily that the driver asked him if his uncle hadn’t died and left him some money.

When the Rue Bassano was reached Pierre jumped down and skipped up stairs with the agility of twenty instead of fifty. He was as charmed with Monsieur’s new apartment as Monsieur himself had been. It was so intensely modern. Light everywhere—all sorts of new-fashioned conveniences—nothing in the least like the dismal old Rue Clarisse. And the view from the windows—so very gay! And the noise—so delicious, so intoxicatingly interesting! The sound of rag time music came from the two music halls across the way. Pierre, dropping all pretence of work, was inspired to do the can-can, whistling and singing meanwhile. The open window proved so attractive that Pierre spent a good part of the time hanging out of it, and only by fits and starts got Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings in place. And the more he saw of the place, the more exuberant was his delight with it, and the more determined he was to stay there. The last tenant—the jolly young journalist named Marsac—had left, as Monsieur Bouchard had noted, some souvenirs on the walls in the shape of gaudy posters and brilliant chromos of ballet girls. These, Pierre might be expected to remove when he began to hang on the walls the severely classic pictures that constituted Monsieur Bouchard’s collection of art. But Pierre seemed to know by clairvoyance Monsieur Bouchard’s latent tastes. He hung “The Coliseum by Moonlight”—a very fine etching—immediately under a red-and-gold young lady who was making a quarter past six with her dainty, uplifted toe. “Socrates and His Pupils” were put where they could get an admirable view of another red-and-gold young lady who was making twelve o’clock meridian as nearly as a human being could. “Kittens at Play”—a great favorite of Mademoiselle’s—was side by side with a picture of Courier, who won the Grand Prix that year, and a very noble portrait of President Loubet was placed next a cut of a celebrated English prize fighter, stripped for the ring. The remainder of the things were neatly arranged; the concierge, who was to supply Monsieur Bouchard’s meals, was interviewed, and an appetizing dinner ordered. Then Pierre, taking possession of the evening newspaper and also of a very comfortable chair by the window, awaited Monsieur Bouchard’s arrival.

It was a charming evening in the middle of June, and still broad daylight at seven o’clock. But Pierre, presently lighting a lamp and drawing the shades, gave the apartment a homelike and inviting aspect.

Just as the clock struck seven Monsieur Bouchard’s step was heard on the stair. Seven o’clock had been Monsieur Bouchard’s hour of coming home since he was fifteen years old, and he had never varied from it three minutes in thirty-seven years. He entered the drawing-room with a new and jovial air, but when he saw Pierre his countenance turned as black as a thunder-cloud.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, curtly.

“I came, Monsieur, by Mademoiselle’s orders,” civilly replied Pierre.

“Mademoiselle’s orders” was still a phrase to conjure by with Monsieur Bouchard. When the yoke of forty years is thrown off there is still a feeling as if it were bearing on the neck. Monsieur Bouchard threw his gloves crossly on the table and asked for his dinner.

“It will be here in five minutes, Monsieur,” replied Pierre. “Will not Monsieur look about the apartment and see if I have arranged things to suit him? The pictures, for example?”

Monsieur, still sulky, rose, and the first thing his eye fell on was the prize fighter’s portrait under President Loubet’s.

“This is intolerable!” he said, indignantly. “Why didn’t you take this prize-fighting daub down?”

“Because,” readily responded Pierre, “the place where it was would be marked on the wall; and besides, I did not like to take the liberty without Monsieur’s permission.”

Monsieur Bouchard passed on to the next picture, that of the hero of the Grand Prix. He liked horses—in pictures, that is—and really found Courier more to his taste than “Kittens at Play.” His countenance cleared, and when Pierre gravely directed him to the young lady poised on one toe and reaching skyward with the other, a faint smile actually appeared on Monsieur Bouchard’s face. Then, his eye falling on the other young lady who was trying to make twelve o’clock meridian, every wrinkle on his forehead smoothed out, his mouth came open like a rat trap, and he involuntarily assumed an attitude of pleased contemplation, with his hands under his coat tails.

Suddenly, however, it flashed on him that Mademoiselle Bouchard’s paid detective, in the person of Pierre, was eyeing him, and with the quickness of thought Monsieur Bouchard’s appreciative smile gave way to a portentous frown, and turning to Pierre, he said, sternly:

“Take this thing away! It is reprehensible both in art and morals! I can’t have it here!”

But, wonder of wonders! there stood Pierre, his mouth wide open in a silent guffaw, his left eye nearly closed. Was it possible that he was daring to wink at his master? Pierre, however, pretty soon solved the situation by putting his finger on the side of his nose—a shocking familiarity—and saying, roguishly:

“Ah, sir, I have something to say to you. I was forced, yes, actually driven, from the decorous quiet of the Rue Clarisse and the company of Mademoiselle Bouchard and my worthy Élise and the cats, to this gay locality by my solicitude for Monsieur. That is to say, Mademoiselle thinks I was. One thing is certain—I was sent here to cake care of Monsieur. Well, it depends entirely on Monsieur how I take care of him. Do you understand, sir?”

“N—n—not exactly.” Monsieur Bouchard was a little frightened. Having Pierre to mount guard over him seemed destructive of the harmless liberty and mild gaiety he had promised himself in the Rue Bassano.

“Just this, sir. My wife, I have reason to know, expects Monsieur to watch me and report to her. Mademoiselle expects me to watch Monsieur and report to her. Now, what prevents us from each giving a good account of the other, and meanwhile doing as we please?”

Monsieur for a moment looked indignant at this impudent proposition, coming, too, as it did from a servant whom he had known as the pattern of decorum for thirty years. But only for a moment. Was it strange, after all, that thirty years of the Rue Clarisse had bred a spirit of revolt in this hitherto obedient husband and submissive servant?

Pierre, seeing evidences of yielding on the part of Monsieur, proceeded to clinch the matter.

“You see, sir, I found out you were looking at this apartment. If I had told Mademoiselle what I knew about it there’d have been a pretty kettle of fish. I doubt if Monsieur would have got away from the Rue Clarisse alive. But I didn’t. I concluded the Rue Bassano was a very pleasant place to live. I like the lively tunes they play at the music halls across the street, and that theatre round the corner is convenient. But I never should have got away if I had showed how much I wanted to come. When Mademoiselle proposed it to me, I lied like a trooper. I not only lied, but I cried, at the prospect of leaving the Rue Clarisse. That settled it. A woman is like a pig. If you want to drive her to Orleans, you must head her for Strasburg. So here we are, sir, and if we don’t have a livelier time here than we did in the Rue Clarisse it will be Monsieur’s fault, not mine.”

Monsieur met this outrageous speech by saying, “You are the most impudent, scandalous, scheming, hypocritical rascal I ever met——”

Pierre just then heard sounds in the little lobby which he understood. He ran out and returned with a tray, which he placed on the table, already laid for one. Then, arranging the dishes with a great flourish, he invited Monsieur Bouchard to take his place at the table. Monsieur complied. The first course was oysters—at three francs the dozen. Then there was turtle soup; devilled lobster, duckling à la Bordelaise—both of which were forbidden in the Rue Clarisse, because Monsieur Bouchard at the age of seven had been made ill by them—and a bottle of champagne, a wine that Mademoiselle had always told her brother was poison to every member of his family.

But Monsieur Bouchard seemed to forget all about this. He ate and drank these things as if he had forgotten all his painful experiences of forty-five years before and as if he had been brought up on champagne.

It was rather pleasant—this first quaff of liberty—having what he liked to eat and drink, and even to wear. He privately determined before finishing his dinner that he would get a new tailor next day and have some clothes made in the latest fashion.

“Have you found out the names of any persons in the house?” asked Monsieur after dinner, lighting a cigar. It was his second; in the Rue Clarisse he was limited to one.

“No one at all, sir,” replied that double-dyed villain, Pierre. “It isn’t judicious to know all sorts of people. I intend to forget some I know.”

Monsieur Bouchard turned in his chair and looked at Pierre; the fellow really seemed changed into another man from what he had been for thirty years. But to Monsieur Bouchard the change was not displeasing. He felt a bond between himself and Pierre, stronger in the last half-hour than in the thirty years they had been master and man. They exchanged looks—it might even be said winks—and Monsieur Bouchard poured out another glass of champagne—his third. And what with the wine and the dinner, he was in that state of exhilaration which the sense of liberty newly acquired always brings.

“Monsieur won’t want me any more to-night?” asked Pierre.

“No,” replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but—be sure to be here at—” he meant to say at ten o’clock that night, but changed his mind and said, “seven o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“Certainly, sir,” answered Pierre. “I expect to be home and in bed before three.”

And he said this with such a debonair manner that Monsieur Bouchard was secretly charmed, and privately determined to acquire something of the same tone.

Pierre gone, Monsieur Bouchard made himself comfortable in an easychair and began toying with a fourth cigar. How agreeable were these modern apartments, after all—everything furnished, every want anticipated—all a tenant had to do was to walk in and hang up his hat. Then his thoughts wandered to that very pretty woman who had travelled in the same train with him that day to St. Germains, and the day before to Verneuil, whither he had gone to look after some property of Léontine’s. Madame Vernet was her name—it was on her travelling bag—and she was a widow—that fact had leaked out ten seconds after he met her. But she was so very demure, so modest, not to say bashful, that she seemed more like a nun than a widow. And so timid—everything frightened her. She trembled when the guard asked her for her ticket, and clung quite desperately to Monsieur Bouchard’s arm in the station at Verneuil. She had expected her aunt and uncle to meet her, and when they were not to be found, blushingly accepted Monsieur Bouchard’s services in getting a cab. And that day, on stepping into the railway carriage to go to St. Germains, there was the dear little diffident thing again. She was charmed to see her friend of the day before, and explained that she was to spend the day with another uncle and aunt she had living at St. Germains. Knowing her inability to care for herself in a crowd, Monsieur Bouchard had meant to put her into a cab, as he had done the day before. But just as the train stopped he was seized by a couple of snuffy old antiquarians and hustled off by them before he could even offer to take charge of the quiet, the retiring, the clinging and helpless Madame Vernet.

Monsieur Bouchard lay back in his chair recalling her prim but pretty gray gown, her fleecy veil of gray gauze, that covered but did not conceal her charming features, and her extremely natty boots. He could not for the life of him remember whether he had mentioned to her on their first meeting that he was going to St. Germains next day. While he was cogitating this point he was rudely disturbed by the opening of the door, and Captain de Meneval walked in briskly.

Now, this good-looking captain of artillery, who had married Monsieur Bouchard’s ward, Léontine, was not exactly to Monsieur’s taste. It is true he had never been able to find out anything to de Meneval’s discredit—and he had looked pretty closely into the captain’s affairs at the time of Léontine’s marriage. As for Léontine herself, she was devoted to her captain and always represented him as being the kindest as well as the most agreeable of husbands. True, he was always complaining about the modest income that Papa Bouchard allowed them, but Léontine herself was ever doing that, and urged de Meneval on in his complaints. Monsieur Bouchard was a little annoyed at de Meneval’s entrance, especially as the artillery captain had adopted a hail-fellow-well-met air, highly objectionable on the part of a man toward another man who practically holds the purse-strings for number one.

Therefore, Monsieur Bouchard rather stiffly gave Captain de Meneval three fingers and offered him a chair.

“Changed your quarters, eh?” said de Meneval, looking about him. “Found the Rue Clarisse rather slow, and came off here where you can be your own man, so to speak?”

“I was not actuated by any such motive,” coldly replied Monsieur Bouchard. “I came here because the rooms I had in the Rue Clarisse were cramped, and I needed to have more space, as well as to be in a more convenient quarter of Paris.”

De Meneval’s bright eyes had been travelling round the walls, and Monsieur Bouchard remembered, with cold chills running up and down his back, the pictures of his predecessor—that scampish young journalist, Marsac—so indiscreetly left hanging by Pierre. A shout of laughter from de Meneval, and a pointing of his stick toward the red-and-gold young ladies, showed Monsieur Bouchard that his apprehensions were not unfounded.

“Is that your selection, Papa Bouchard?” cried the reprobate captain. “Never saw them before—you must have kept them in hiding in the Rue Clarisse. I’ll tell Léontine,” and the captain laughed loudly.

He had a great haw-haw of a laugh that had always been particularly annoying to Monsieur Bouchard, and this thing of calling him “Papa” Bouchard was an unwarrantable liberty. So he replied, freezingly:

“You are altogether mistaken. These extraordinary prints were left here by my predecessor, a very wild young journalist—I believe most young journalists are very wild—and they come down to-morrow. It would seriously disturb me to have those ballet pictures around.”

“Well, now,” said de Meneval, with an unabashed front, “I think you are too hard on the poor girls. I have known a good many of them in my life—taken them to little suppers, you know—and generally they’re very hard-working, decent girls. Some of them have a husband and children to help to support. Others have dependent parents. They’re unconventional—very—and like to eat and drink at somebody else’s expense, but that’s no great harm. Plenty of other people in much higher walks of life do the same.”

“I don’t care to discuss ballet girls with you, Monsieur de Meneval,” remarked Monsieur Bouchard, with great dignity.

“But I want to discuss them with you,” answered de Meneval, with what Monsieur Bouchard thought most improper levity and familiarity. “That’s what I came to you this evening about. That’s why I have been haunting the Rue Clarisse during the last ten days, trying to see you alone.”

“Yes. I know that I have been honored with a good many cards of yours. Also of Léontine’s.”

“Oh, Léontine! You may be sure she does not come on the errand that brings me. While she feels the narrowness of our income as much as I do, she manages to live within her allowance, and I don’t believe owes a franc in the world. But, Papa Bouchard, to come to business——”

De Meneval paused. He had a good deal of courage, but the stony silence with which his confidences were met would have disconcerted an ogre.

“Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said Monsieur Bouchard, icily.

“I’m going on. You see, it is just this way—that is—” de Meneval floundered—“as I was going to say—Léontine, you know, is perfect—it really is touching to see how she bears our enforced but unnecessary poverty. I wish I could do as well.”

Here de Meneval came to a dead stop, and Monsieur Bouchard, by way of encouraging him, repeated, in the same tone:

“Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”

“But I can’t go on with you fixing that basilisk glare on me,” cried de Meneval, rising and walking about excitedly. “I believe, if you say, ‘Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine,’ to me again, I’ll do something desperate—smash the mirror with my stick, or turn on the fire alarm. I assure you, Monsieur Bouchard, I am still a respectable member of society. I don’t beat my wife or cheat at cards, and I have never committed a felony in my life.”

“Glad to hear it,” was Papa Bouchard’s fatherly reception of this speech.

De Meneval, after walking once or twice up and down the room, succeeded in mastering his indignation, and sat quietly down in the chair he had just vacated, facing Monsieur Bouchard, and then, still floundering awkwardly, managed to say:

“I—I—am very much in want—I am, at present—in short, I am in the most unpleasant predicament.” And then he mumbled, “Money.”

“So I knew the moment you entered this room,” was Monsieur Bouchard’s rejoinder.

“Then, sir,” said de Meneval, recovering his spirits now that the murder was out, “I wish you had said so in the beginning. It would have saved me a very bad quarter of an hour.”

“Young man,” severely replied Monsieur Bouchard, “I had not the slightest wish to save you a bad quarter of an hour.”

“So it seems; but I will tell you just how it stands. You know I am stationed at Melun——”

“I have known that fact ever since I knew you.”

“Very well, sir. There is a music hall at Melun—the Pigeon House—with a garden back of it, kept by one Michaux, a rascal, if ever I saw one. Now, it’s very dull at Melun the evenings I am on duty and can’t get back to Léontine in Paris, and it’s a small place, and quite naturally, when one hears the music going at the Pigeon House, and sees the lights flashing and the people eating and drinking under the trees on the terrace garden, it’s quite natural, I say, to drop in there for the evening.”

“Quite natural for you, sir. Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”

De Meneval restrained his impulse to brain Monsieur Bouchard, sitting so sternly and primly before him, and kept on:

And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wine.

“Then there is the garden—jolly place, with electric lights—where you can get a pretty fair meal. It is quite unique—nothing like it in Paris or anywhere else that I can think of, and I’ve seen a good many—” here de Meneval hastily checked himself. “It’s quite the thing to give suppers to the young ladies of the ballet—and some of them are not so young, either—in the gardens. The proprietor, of course, encourages it, and the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes to have an ice or a glass of wine. All the fellows in my regiment do it; it’s considered quite the thing, and their mothers and sisters come out to the Pigeon House to see them do it. If it wasn’t for the support given the place by the garrison it would have to close up, and then Melun would be duller than ever. The Pigeon House is unconventional, but perfectly respectable.”

“Possibly,” drily replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but not probably.”

“Good heavens, sir! you are mistaken. Léontine has been teasing me for a month past to take her out there to supper some evening, and I’ve promised to do so this very next week. Do you think I’d take my wife to any place that wasn’t respectable?”

De Meneval was getting warm over this, and Monsieur Bouchard was forced to admit that he supposed the Pigeon House was respectable.

“But that doesn’t prevent these jolly little suppers to the young ladies of the ballet, and especially those given to them by the officers. I assure you it is mere harmless eating and drinking. The poor girls have to work hard, and when they get through of an evening I dare say very few of them have two francs to buy something to eat. So a number of us have got into the way of giving these poor souls supper after the performance. Even Major Fallière goes to these suppers, and you know his nickname in the regiment.”

“No, I know of him only as a very correct, middle-aged man. I wish you had the same sort of reputation as Major Fallière.”

“Well, he is called by the juniors old P. M. P.—that is to say, the Pink of Military Propriety. And Fallière is my chum, and he goes to these little suppers.”

De Meneval brought this out with an air of triumph, but Monsieur Bouchard remained coldly unresponsive, and then de Meneval let the cat out of the bag.

“And I say, Monsieur Bouchard, the proprietor of the Pigeon House sent me in my account the other day—nineteen hundred francs nineteen centimes—and I haven’t got the money to pay it.”

De Meneval lay back and waited for the explosion. Monsieur Bouchard started from his chair, bawling:

“Nineteen hundred francs! And you no doubt expect me to pay it out of your wife’s income! I wonder what Léontine would say to this!”

“That’s just what I’ve been wondering, too,” replied de Meneval, somewhat dolefully. “Léontine is the dearest girl in the world, but she is a woman, after all. I can prove to her that I have never given a franc’s worth to any other woman, except something to eat and drink, but all the same I’d just as soon she would think I spent my Melun evenings sitting in my quarters, with her picture before me and reading up on ballistics, as an artillery officer should.”

“And would you deliberately impose on her innocence in this respect?” asked Monsieur Bouchard, indignantly.

“My dear sir,” calmly replied de Meneval, “you have never been married. If you had, you would not talk about a man’s imposing on his wife’s innocence. Love is clairvoyant, and most men know what their wives wish to believe, and gratify them accordingly. It’s a very complex subject, and needs to be dealt with intelligently.”

“I think our standard of intelligence is not the same,” grimly responded Monsieur Bouchard. “But when I tell Léontine about this nineteen hundred francs due at the Pigeon House, I trust she will be able to deal with you intelligently.”

“I am afraid she will,” replied de Meneval, with some anxiety; “but after it’s paid I know I can persuade her that it was not the least actual harm—just a little lark in the way of killing time.”

“And may I ask, since you speak so confidently of its being paid, whom do you expect to pay it?”

“You, sir, of course,” replied de Meneval, taking a cigar out of Monsieur Bouchard’s case.

Papa Bouchard jumped as if a hornet had stung him. “I, sir? Since you have assumed this modest expectation, perhaps you anticipate that I will pay it out of my private income?”

“Oh, no, I mean out of my wife’s income,” replied de Meneval, puffing away at his cigar.

“You are too modest, Monsieur le Capitaine. Now let me tell you this—you misunderstood your customer in bringing this outrageous bill to me, and it won’t be paid. I have a sincere affection for Léontine, and I don’t intend to let any captain of artillery in the French army, husband or no husband, make ducks and drakes of her money.”

Papa Bouchard leaned back, folded his arms and looked the embodiment of statuesque determination. Captain de Meneval puffed a while longer at his cigar, and then rose. There was resolution, as if he still held a trump card to play, written on his countenance.

“Very well, Monsieur Bouchard,” he said, readjusting the blossom in his buttonhole. “I am sorry you are so unyielding. You didn’t ask me if I was prepared to offer any security that the loan would be repaid. If you had I should have given you this.”

De Meneval pulled from his pocket a glittering string of diamonds, every stone glittering like a star.

“This is the diamond necklace I gave Léontine on our marriage. Of course, I could not afford it, but I was in love with her—I’m more in love with her now—and I gave her what would please her, without counting the cost.”

Papa Bouchard gasped. “And Léontine—does she know of this?”

De Meneval shook his head. “You see, when I bought this necklace for forty thousand francs the jeweller showed me at the same time an exact copy of it in paste—seventy-five francs. He told me when he sold a necklace like this he usually sold a counterfeit, for emergencies—you know. I bought the seventy-five franc necklace, too—and I didn’t mention it to Léontine. I think all the philosophers, beginning with the Egyptian school of something or other B. C., down through the Greeks and the Romans to Kant and Schopenhauer, agree that it is not philosophic for a married man to tell everything to his wife. So I never told Léontine about this imitation necklace, but kept it for an emergency, as the jeweller—a married man—advised me. To-night, when I saw I was in a tight place and had to come to you, I quietly slipped the paste necklace into the case, which we keep in our strong-box, and put the real one into my pocket. I came within an ace of being caught by Léontine, though. The dear girl entered the room a minute afterward and asked me to get out her diamond necklace—she was going to the opera with some friends of hers—and off she’s gone, glittering with paste, and as innocent as a lamb, while here is the real thing.”

Papa Bouchard was staggered for a minute or two. Then he said: “So you expected me to turn amateur pawnbroker for your benefit?”

“Well,” replied de Meneval, stroking his moustache, “I should not have put it in that brutally frank fashion myself, but if you don’t care to act the amateur pawnbroker, I shall be obliged to take it to the professionals.”

“No, no, no,” cried Papa Bouchard. He really was fond of Léontine, and didn’t mean to risk her diamonds. Nevertheless, there was a stand-and-deliver air about the whole transaction which vexed him inexpressibly. He sat silent for a while and so did de Meneval.

Papa Bouchard, for all that he had been hectored by a woman all his life, was yet no fool. He saw that de Meneval had him in a trap, and reasoned out the whole thing inside of two minutes.

“Now, Monsieur le Capitaine,” he said, presently, “I see where we stand. I will not lend you the money out of Léontine’s income—but I will lend it to you myself. I shall keep this necklace until the money is paid. Meanwhile, I shall go out to see this place—the Pigeon House—and judge for myself all these facts that you allege.”

“Do!” cried the cheerful reprobate, with a grin. “Perhaps you’ll like it and get into the habit of going there.”

“And perhaps,” replied Papa Bouchard, “I may not like it, and you may have your income reduced if you persist in going there. And then—when the whole transaction is concluded and the money repaid, I shall disclose every particular of it to Léontine.”

“By all means!” De Meneval was actually laughing in Papa Bouchard’s face. “I’ll deny every word of it, of course, and call for proof. I’ll tell Léontine you tried to persuade me to go out there with you and I refused. I’ll say you gave the suppers, and I’ll bring twenty of the best fellows in the regiment to swear to it—and you’ll see who comes out ahead in that game.”

Papa Bouchard was so horrified at the cold-blooded villainy of this that he could hardly speak for a minute. But he refused to take the threat seriously, and demanding the bill, which de Meneval promptly produced, said, stiffly:

“You will hear from me in a day or two.”

“And how about the advance?” asked de Meneval, “I should like about a thousand francs in cash.”

Papa Bouchard put up his eye-glass and surveyed Captain de Meneval all over, which scrutiny was borne with the greatest coolness by the brazen captain of artillery.

“You see,” continued de Meneval, “the story is very liable to get into the newspapers—extremely liable, I may say. It will be something like this—that Monsieur Bouchard held Captain and Madame de Meneval so tight that they were compelled to let Monsieur Bouchard have Madame’s diamond necklace for a small loan—and the newspapers will probably make it out to be Léontine’s wardrobe and my watch and chain besides.”

De Meneval paused—the fellow knew when to stop. Monsieur Bouchard, swelling with rage, paused too—and then, taking out his cheque book, angrily wrote a cheque for a thousand francs, which he handed Captain de Meneval in exchange for a sheaf of bills produced by the captain.

“Before paying another franc, I shall go out to the Pigeon House and investigate the whole business,” said Monsieur Bouchard, savagely.

“Ta, ta!” called out the graceless dog of a captain, picking up his hat. “Remember, you are on your good behavior. One single indiscretion at the Pigeon House and I’ll telegraph the whole story to Mademoiselle Bouchard, and then——”

Papa Bouchard simply sat and swelled the more with rage at the unabashed front of this captain of artillery—but he was galvanized into motion by a light tap on the door and a musical voice calling:

“Are you in, Papa Bouchard?”

Although all the fulminations of Monsieur Bouchard had failed to affect Captain de Meneval, the sound of that voice flurried him considerably. For it was Léontine’s, and de Meneval had no particular desire for an interview with her under Papa Bouchard’s basilisk eye. He turned quite pale, did this robust captain, and muttered:

“I don’t want to be caught here.”

Papa Bouchard smiled in a superior manner—he rather liked the notion of de Meneval being caught there—and called out to Léontine:

“Come in.”

M. Bouchard’s hat, cape-greatcoat and umbrella lay on a chair where he had placed them on coming in. Without so much as saying, “By your leave,” de Meneval slung the greatcoat round him, clapped Papa Bouchard’s hat on his head, seized the umbrella in such a way as to hide his face, and with his own hat under his arm opened the door to the lobby and darted past Léontine, nearly knocking her down.

Léontine, wearing an evening gown, a long and beautiful white mantle, and a chiffon scarf over her head, entered, somewhat discomposed by her encounter.

“What a very rude man that was who pushed by me so suddenly!” she said, advancing. “Some of your tiresome clients, Papa Bouchard, and I order you not to have that creature here again.” And she ran forward and kissed Papa Bouchard on his bald head.

Now, it was plain that this pretty Léontine took liberties with her guardian, godfather and trustee, and also that Papa Bouchard liked these liberties. It was in vain that he tried to assume a stern air with Léontine. She pinched his ear when he scolded, drew caricatures of him when he frowned, and when at last he was forced to smile, as he always was, perched herself on the arm of his chair and declined to be evicted. And she was so very pretty! The French have a saying that the devil himself was handsome when he was young. Léontine de Meneval had more than the mere beauty of youth, of form, of color. She was the embodiment of graceful gaiety. She looked like one of those brilliant white butterflies whose lives are spent dancing in the sun. The great and glorious dowry of love, of youth, of beauty, of health, of happiness was hers. Her entering the room was like a breath of daffodils in spring. She was a most beguiling creature. It was a source of wonder and congratulation to Papa Bouchard that this charming girl did not succeed in bamboozling all of her own income out of him and all of his as well.

Having kissed him, pinched his ear, and otherwise agreeably maltreated her trustee, Léontine looked round the new apartment with dancing eyes.

“Well,” she cried, laughing, “I see how it is. You couldn’t stand the Rue Clarisse another day or hour. Did anybody ever tell you, Papa Bouchard, that you had a vein of—a vein of—what shall I call it?—a taste for the wine of life in you?”

“Nobody ever did,” replied Papa Bouchard, trying to be stern.

“Then I tell you so. And look at these pictures—oh, oh!”

Léontine covered her face with her chiffon scarf, to avoid the sight of the young ladies pointing skyward with their toes.

“And I wonder what Aunt Céleste will say when she sees them,” continued this impish Léontine.

“She won’t see them. They will be removed to-morrow,” hastily put in Papa Bouchard.

“You’d better, you dear old thing, if you value your life. I shall have to tell Victor about this. How he will laugh! I do all I can to make him laugh and to amuse him when he is with me, for it is so dull for him when he is obliged to stay at Melun. When his regimental duties are over he has nothing to do in the evening but to sit in his quarters and study up ballistics, as he calls it, and look at my picture by way of refreshment.”

Papa Bouchard sniffed. He commonly sniffed at the mention of Captain de Meneval’s name.

“But,” continued Léontine, trying to curl Papa Bouchard’s scanty hair, using her pretty fingers for curling tongs, “he won’t be so lonely now at Melun, for his old chum, Major Fallière, is stationed there, too, and he and Victor are like brothers. You know, dear Papa Bouchard, that you yourself admitted Major Fallière’s friendship to be a letter of recommendation to any man. He is called the Pink of Military Propriety, and if Victor led the larky life you so unjustly suspect him of, he couldn’t be friends with Major Fallière, who is positively straitlaced.”

“I can’t say I ever saw a really straitlaced major,” replied Papa Bouchard.

“And I have not yet seen this dear old P. M. P. He was in Algiers when Victor and I were married—and he has been so little in Paris since his return that he has not yet had a chance to call. But he has sent me word by Victor that he already loves me, and I hope to see him in a few days, for Victor has promised to let me come out to Melun and dine at the Pigeon House.”

“The Pigeon House!”

“Yes. Why not? You’ll be going there yourself, I dare say, now that you have eloped from Aunt Céleste. Oh, you’ll be a desperate character in time, I have no doubt. I see it in your eye. Victor and I, though, shall keep watch on you, if you go too far and too fast!”

This was a nice way for a ward to talk to her trustee—and such a trustee as Monsieur Bouchard! Therefore Papa Bouchard called up his most resolute air of disapproval, and said:

“I am afraid the Pigeon House is hardly a proper place for you to go to, Léontine.”

“If I thought that I should have been out there long ago,” responded this sprightly imp. “But, unluckily, it’s perfectly proper.”

“I wish,” replied Papa Bouchard, “you could get one single serious idea into that head of yours.”

“I have a great many serious ideas,” said Léontine, suddenly assuming an unwonted air of gravity, and leaving her perch on the arm of Papa Bouchard’s chair for a seat directly facing him. “What would you say if I told you that I am taking a deep and real interest in practical sociological questions, such as giving employment to the deserving workers?”

“I should say you were at least reaching the development I have always wished for you. But I hope you are confining your experiments to giving work only. The mere giving of money tends to pauperize. The giving of work is the intelligent mode of benefiting a man or a woman.”

“That’s it precisely,” cried Léontine, instantly losing her air of gravity, and jumping up to kiss the bald spot on the top of Papa Bouchard’s head. Then she resumed her chair and her serious manner simultaneously. “That’s what I knew you’d say, dear Papa Bouchard. I had your approval in mind all the time. It came about in this way,” continued Léontine, solemnly. “There is a very worthy man—a Pole, Putzki by name—who is one of the best tailors in Paris. I became very much interested in this man; likewise in his jackets, coats and riding habits. I have been to his shop several times and talked with him. The man is an exile from his native country. How sad that is! And he cannot go back. He is very deserving and has a family to support. He doesn’t ask for charity, but I gave him——”

“All the money you had,” hastily and angrily interjected Papa Bouchard.

“Not at all,” replied Léontine, with dignity. “I had learned better than that. I have not given him a franc. But I ordered, out of pure charity and good will to a fellow creature, five walking gowns, three jackets, two long coats, a yachting costume and a couple of riding habits.”

Papa Bouchard’s mouth opened wide, but no sound came forth. Léontine, taking advantage of his amazed silence, kept on, rapidly:

“Then there is another deserving case—Louise, a milliner and modiste. She has a husband who squanders her money on his pleasures. If Victor did that I think it would kill me. Like Putzki she does not ask money, but work. Out of sympathy for her, I have had her make me four ball gowns, nine visiting and house costumes, some little négligées and things, and about eighteen hats. And here are the bills.”

With this Léontine drew out two huge bills and thrust them into Papa Bouchard’s scowling face. Not only was he annoyed with Léontine for her extravagance, but he was conscious that she had fooled him. He sat perfectly still and silent, glaring into Léontine’s serious, pretty countenance—not so serious, though, but that Papa Bouchard saw the shadow of a smile on her rose-lipped mouth.

“And you expect to pay those bills out of your allowance, I presume?” said Papa Bouchard, sarcastically, after a moment.

“You flatter me,” replied Léontine. “I always knew I was a good financier, but to expect me to pay such bills as these out of my meagre allowance is to credit me with the financial genius of a Rothschild.”

“Then they will go unpaid!” cried Papa Bouchard, determinedly. This assault on him, following hard on Captain de Meneval’s, was rather more than he could stand. Léontine did not know it, but the defeat Papa Bouchard had just suffered at the hands of that good-looking scapegrace, her husband, had hardened his heart against her and her milliner’s and tailor’s bills. However, she was not easily frightened. She only tapped her little foot, smiled loftily and said:

“But they must be paid!”

Papa Bouchard, who had no more voice than a crow, began to hum a tune and to turn over the leaves of a scientific journal that lay on the table before him. A pause followed. Then Léontine said again, very softly and very determinedly:

“And they will be paid.”

“How, may I ask?” inquired Papa Bouchard, whirling round on her. Léontine, throwing aside her chiffon scarf, which she had held round her bare, white neck, showed a string of diamonds, as she thought them to be—paste, Papa Bouchard knew them to be—and said:

“My wedding gift from Victor. They are worth forty thousand francs. I can easily raise ten thousand on them.”

Papa Bouchard lay back in his chair, absolutely stunned. So, both of them were for turning the necklace into cash! And what scandal would be precipitated if Léontine carried out her intention! The necklace would be discovered to be paste, and Léontine would naturally be deeply incensed against her husband; Papa Bouchard was that already, but he really loved his little Léontine, and the thought of trouble between her and her husband disturbed him.

“Does Captain de Meneval know of these bills?” he asked, significantly.

Léontine hung her head. “No,” she faltered, “and that is the part which distresses me. Victor has been so very prudent—has no bills, poor fellow—he has no amusements away from me—and I—I have been so selfish—” Léontine’s eyes were bright with tears.

“Don’t make yourself unhappy about Victor being too prudent. He need never give you any anxiety on that point,” was Papa Bouchard’s unfeeling reply.

There was a moment’s silence. Papa Bouchard, who had a shrewd head for business, was rapidly cogitating the best thing co do under the circumstances. Léontine, who had no head for business at all, was wondering how she could keep Victor from noticing the absence of the necklace. She had just concluded to fall into a state of great weakness and prostration, thus preventing her from going into society, when she received something like a galvanic shock, for there, before her eyes, Papa Bouchard was holding up the exact counterpart of her necklace. The two necklaces made a blaze of light.

“Where did you get it?” she gasped, pointing to the glittering thing in Papa Bouchard’s hand.

Now, Papa Bouchard was a clever man, as men are clever, but he was not so clever as a woman. A brilliant scheme had flashed into his mind—he would produce the real necklace, tell Léontine it was paste, and so make sure that she would not take it to the pawnbroker; and he could manage both de Meneval and Léontine equally well with the paste necklace. He did not much fancy having the responsibility of so many diamonds as the real one contained. But he had not foreseen this direct and embarrassing question of Léontine’s. He looked blank for a moment or two, and then, having no better answer ready, replied testily:

“I wish you wouldn’t ask such questions, Léontine. Of course I came by it honestly.”

“Of course—of course,” cried Léontine, jumping up. “Does Aunt Céleste know of this?”

“N—n—no,” faltered Papa Bouchard. This was another facer for him.

Léontine had not the slightest doubt that Papa Bouchard could give a perfectly rational and correct account of how he came by the necklace—it was probably the property of some client—but seeing a fine chance to hold Papa Bouchard up to obloquy and to lecture him, she promptly determined to give him the benefit of her pretended suspicions. She therefore rose with great dignity, gathered her drapery about her, and looking significantly at Papa Bouchard, said:

“You will pardon me for saying that this has a most singular appearance, and I shall lose no time in informing Aunt Céleste.”

Papa Bouchard turned pale. Was ever such a diabolical trap laid for an innocent man? He was not at all sure, if he gave the true account of how he came by the stones, that Captain de Meneval would not carry out his threat and deny the whole business. The fellow had actually laughed while he was making the threat, and seemed to regard it as an excellent joke to impair the peace and honor of a respectable elderly gentleman. Papa Bouchard got up, sat down again, and groaned.

“Léontine,” he said, to that professedly indignant young woman, “you don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t understand,” replied Léontine, with unkind emphasis.

“It was this way—I was out at St. Germains the other day—” Papa Bouchard was floundering hopelessly, but a bright thought struck him—“the day of the meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians. Very interesting time we had—several specimens of the paleozoic age were found——”

“And this match to my necklace was among them? Fie, Papa Bouchard!”

“Not at all. Will you let me speak? I say I was out at St. Germains for the meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians. The curator of the museum is a great friend of mine—he has an old mother—finest old lady you ever saw—eighty years old, bedridden and stone blind, but as young as a daisy, full of life and talk—it’s a treat to see her. My friend wanted a birthday present for her, and I had seen this necklace in a shop window in the Avenue de l’Opéra—and I proposed to—to—to—” Papa Bouchard faltered.

“Buy it for an old lady, eighty years old and bedridden? Oh, Papa Bouchard, try again!”

“Léontine,” said Papa Bouchard, sternly, “I don’t like these flippant interruptions. I did not say—I never meant to say that I proposed to buy a diamond necklace for an old lady, bedridden and eighty years of age. It happened there were spectacles of all kinds made and kept at the same shop—and I went and got a pair of Scotch pebble glasses, at fifty francs——”

“But you said she was stone blind?”

“What if I did? I didn’t say I got the glasses for her. But as I see you won’t let me tell you the story of the necklace, I shall simply keep it to myself. As a matter of fact, they are not diamonds, they are paste.”

Léontine, taking the real stones in her hand, examined them carefully. Then, laying them against the necklace around her own milk-white throat, she remarked: “I see they are. Paste, pure and simple.”

Papa Bouchard could hardly suppress a smile at this, but he did.

“Very well. They are paste, and they cost seventy-five francs. Now, I will make you a proposition. I propose that I shall look into these bills and see what arrangement can be made with Putzki and Louise, and reach some basis of settlement whereby I may be able, by making a series of small payments out of your income, to get rid of them. Meanwhile, I am afraid to trust you with your own necklace—you will always be trying to raise money on it. So I shall hand you over this paste one, which no one but a jeweller can tell from the real one. You will give me the real one—and I will hold it until your bills are paid. Then I will return it to you. I suppose you don’t wish your husband to know of this, and I will agree to keep it from him as long as you keep out of debt. But if you ever transgress in this way again I shall tell him the whole story.”

Léontine listened to this with the utmost gravity, and then replied: “You are a very clever man, Papa Bouchard, but you will find your little Léontine a very clever woman—too clever to put her head in the noose you have so kindly held open for her. I sha’n’t dream of giving up my necklace for anything less than a cheque out of my own money for the payment in full of these bills. I should be willing to take the paste necklace temporarily until the bills are paid. After you have returned it to me I sha’n’t be in the least afraid of your telling Victor, for if you do I shall tell Aunt Céleste all your tales about the bedridden old lady and the trip to St. Germains and the widow——”

“What widow?” asked Papa Bouchard, forgetful for a moment of the lady he had met in the railway carriage two days in succession.

“The prim little widow you went to Verneuil with. My maid happened to be on the same train and saw you helping her out, and heard you say to her you were going to St. Germains to-day—and by the way, I happen to know you did go to St. Germains to-day.”

What a story was this to hatch about the most correct old gentleman in Paris! Papa Bouchard simply glared at Léontine, but that merry young woman was smiling and dimpling, as if debts and duns and trips to Verneuil and diamond necklaces were quite the ordinary ingredients of life. The hen that hatched a cockatrice was no more puzzled and dismayed than was Papa Bouchard at the vagaries of his ward.

“Well,” cried he, after a pause, determined to put a bold front on the matter, “what if I did find a lady in the same railway carriage with me, going to Verneuil? I hadn’t hired the whole train, or even a whole carriage. And what if she was a widow, and good-looking! And suppose to-day, in the pursuit of science, I go to St. Germains and quite by accident I find the same lady in the compartment with me? What does that mean except a series of accidents?”

“Yes, a series of accidents,” replied Léontine, with an arch glance. The minx seemed to have no more conscience about teasing poor Papa Bouchard than had her rattlebrain of a husband. “It is remarkable that accidents like these always happen in cycles. I should be willing to wager that a third accident is now brewing, and you will see that prim little widow again before the week is out. I shouldn’t be surprised if this change of quarters had something to do with it!”

“Léontine!” said Papa Bouchard, indignantly, but that heedless young person only laughed and said:

“I’ll tell Victor that. How the dear boy will laugh! The fact is, I don’t know whether I can let Victor associate with you or not—you might lead him off into your own primrose path of dalliance with widows!”

Was ever anything so exasperating! Papa Bouchard ground his teeth—he had a great mind to throw over the whole business of Léontine’s money and her affairs, only he knew it would please her too well. His grim meditations were interrupted by Léontine tapping him on the shoulder and saying, “Now, will you hand me over the cheque for the whole amount of those bills—six thousand francs—or must I take this”—touching the paste necklace round her throat—“to the pawnbroker?”

“You certainly can’t expect me to give you a cheque until I have looked into these swindling bills,” answered Papa Bouchard.

“I certainly do,” tartly said Léontine, “and you will either hand me over immediately a cheque for six thousand francs, or I will drive to Aunt Céleste’s before I go to the opera—and I think you’ll have an early visit from her in the morning. I shall tell her about this mysterious necklace, and the pretty widow you have no doubt been running after for at least six months——”

“I never saw her in my life until yesterday,” cried Monsieur Bouchard.

“So you say. Perhaps you have been pursuing her for a year.”

Monsieur Bouchard tore his hair, but there was no help for him. After an angry pause, he sat down, wrote out a cheque for six thousand francs, which he slammed down on the table, and Léontine picked up with a joyful cry. And then, with a desperate attempt at an authoritative manner, he said, sternly,

“Pray understand, Léontine, that I reserve the right to tell your husband all the circumstances of this affair if I choose to. I am not intimidated by your threat to tell my sister some cock-and-bull story about me.”

Léontine reflected a moment, her pretty head on her hand.

“Do you know, dear Papa Bouchard,” she said, after a while, “that you and I are engaged in what the Americans call a game of bluff?”

“Don’t know anything about the Americans. Don’t know what bluff is.”

“Oh, yes, you do—you know the thing, although you may not recognize the name. But you are a good soul, Papa Bouchard, and Victor and I do bother you a good deal; but only say no more of this matter—about Putzki and Louise—and don’t tell Victor, and I’ll not tell Aunt Céleste, and everything will come perfectly right.”

As Léontine spoke she unclasped her necklace, kissed it, and with a gesture of scorn put on the real necklace, saying to herself: “I never thought I should come to this.”

And then came a loud rat-tat at the door, and in walked Captain de Meneval again. He carried Monsieur Bouchard’s impedimenta, with which he had so unceremoniously made off. Both he and Léontine looked thoroughly disconcerted at meeting each other. De Meneval thought she had gone away. Léontine blushed guiltily, and had barely enough presence of mind to cover up the necklace lying on the table with Papa Bouchard’s scientific journal.

“Ah, good-evening, Papa Bouchard!” cried this arch hypocrite of an artillery captain, as if he had not seen Monsieur Bouchard half an hour before. “I came to return your umbrella and coat. Thanks very much for lending them to me in an emergency. Why, little girl, I thought you were on your way to the opera?”

“I am just going,” answered Léontine, moving toward the door.

“One moment!” cried Papa Bouchard, waving his arm authoritatively. These two scapegraces had used him for their own purposes that night, had made game of him, and had threatened to discover a mare’s nest to Mademoiselle Bouchard and had got seven thousand francs out of him in cold cash. Now, however, he would take his revenge. “Wait,” he said to Léontine, who returned reluctantly to her former place.

Monsieur Bouchard, assuming the attitude and tone with which he addressed a couple of criminals in the pursuit of his professional duties, then continued:

“This is a very auspicious opportunity for me to speak to you both, in each other’s presence, with a view to your mutual reform. Observe the word; I use it advisedly.” He paused. Léontine trembled with apprehension, while de Meneval surreptitiously mopped his brow. “You have both of you been very extravagant—wasteful, I may say. Nothing that I have yet said has availed to stop the outgo of money far beyond your reasonable wants—so I think. Now, I have come to the conclusion that in order for you to economize you must give up your apartment. You must leave Paris.”

Leave Paris!

De Meneval was not so stunned but that he could get up rather a ghastly laugh.

“Leave Paris! Ha, ha! That’s little enough to me, Papa Bouchard—Léontine and ballistics are all I want to make me happy anywhere—but Léontine—oh, I know she won’t go!”

“Won’t she, eh? Not to an inexpensive little cottage outside of Paris—within striking distance of Melun, so you may go back and forth—a very inexpensive cottage?”

“Well, if that’s your game,” cried de Meneval, savagely, “there are plenty of cottages to be had at Melun. Our veterinarian has just given up his cottage—three rooms and a dog kennel. That’s cheap enough. Shall I take it to-morrow for Captain and Madame de Meneval?”

“You are trifling, Monsieur le Capitaine,” coolly answered Papa Bouchard. “You understand perfectly well what I mean.”

“But, Papa Bouchard,” put in Léontine, faintly, “while I don’t object to the cottage, it would be cruel to Victor to force him away from Paris. It is so dull, anyway, at Melun. The only recreation he has is when he comes to Paris. Poor, poor Victor!”

Léontine was almost weeping—de Meneval was swearing between his teeth. Papa Bouchard was waving his arm about, serene in the consciousness of power.

“I do not say you are to leave Paris to-night, or even to-morrow; perhaps a week—possibly a month—may be given you. But you are both too fond of gaieties, of clothes, of suppers and other dissipated things, and there are too many jewellers’ shops in Paris.” This thrust caused both of the culprits to quake. “So you must go to some retired place and economize.”

“I see,” replied de Meneval, who was thoroughly exasperated. “Having yourself practically run away from a quiet and respectable locality to these gay quarters, with young ladies of the ballet on every hand—” de Meneval pointed angrily to the red-and-gold young ladies on the walls—“now you wish to send my poor little wife off to some hole of a village, where one may exist but not live. I don’t speak of myself—I don’t care. It’s for her.”

“Very well,” answered Papa Bouchard, maliciously. “You may make that hole of a village a paradise steeped in dreamlike splendor to Léontine by your devoted and lover-like attentions to her. You can live over your honeymoon. Won’t you like that, Léontine?”

“Y—yes,” replied Léontine, dolefully.

“Some pretty rural place—all birds and flowers, eh? And a little dog. Doesn’t the prospect charm you?”

“Yes—only—for Victor——”

“Haven’t you just heard Victor say that all he needs to be perfectly happy are you and ballistics? So I suppose, Monsieur de Meneval, you will be revelling in rapture.”

“I suppose so,” replied de Meneval, gloomily. “Come, Léontine, shall I put you in the carriage? You won’t have many chances of going to the opera, poor child, after this.”

Léontine rose and said, coldly, “Good-night, Papa Bouchard.” There was no tweaking of his ear, no patting of his bald head this time. They went out like two sulky and disappointed children.

Papa Bouchard remained chuckling to himself. He had those two naughty young creatures in the hollow of his hand—it would be a good while before they would dare to be saucy to him—and that little cottage in the suburbs was a fine idea. Strange it had not occurred to him before.

He seated himself in his easychair and began to review the events of his first day of liberty. His mind went back to the point where he had been interrupted by de Meneval’s entrance—the point where the dear little bashful widow had appeared in his mind’s eye. If he had been in the Rue Clarisse he would never even have dared to think of Madame Vernet, for his sister could actually read his thoughts. But here, in this jolly bachelor place, he could think about widows all he liked. And shutting his eyes the better to recall that slim, shrinking, gray-gowned figure, he opened them to see Madame Vernet quietly walking into the room, without knocking and quite as if she belonged there. She advanced to the table on one side of the room, laid her lace parasol on it and proceeded to remove her long gloves, but stopped in the midst of the process to rearrange a chair and to set straight a picture—one of Monsieur Bouchard’s.

“This is very comfortable,” she said, musingly, “but I can improve it—when I am settled here.”

Papa Bouchard listened as if in a dream. He had not progressed so far as that. And then Madame Vernet turning and seeing him, uttered a faint shriek, as if she had seen a snake instead of a human being, and ran—but not toward the door.

“My dear Madame Vernet, pray do not be alarmed. It is only I—Monsieur Bouchard,” cried Papa Bouchard, striving to reassure her.

“Oh! is it you? Forgive me for being so agitated, but I am so easily frightened!” panted Madame Vernet. “Men always frighten me—I am the most timid woman in the world!”

“So I see,” tenderly replied Papa Bouchard. He was standing quite close to Madame Vernet now, and she had clasped his arm and looked nervously about her, as if she expected another man to spring out of the fireplace or down from the ceiling.

“But when I saw it was only you, all my fears vanished,” she continued. “And will you tell me to what I am indebted for the honor and pleasure of this visit?”

“A question I was just asking myself. This is my new apartment.”

“I beg pardon,” replied Madame Vernet, “but it is my new apartment. I only moved into it to-day.”

“And, Madame, I only moved into it to-day.”

“It is number nine, fourth floor.”

“No, Madame, it is number five, third floor.”

“Ah,” cried Madame Vernet. “I see. My apartment is directly over this, and corresponds with it exactly. I did not go up high enough, and I am not quite familiar with the surroundings. How absurd!” and she laughed, showing the prettiest teeth in the world.

“How delightful!” replied Monsieur Bouchard, gallantly.

“And how singular! This is the third time in three days we have met by accident.”

An uncomfortable recollection of Léontine’s speech about accidents of this sort occurring in cycles flashed through Monsieur Bouchard’s brain, but he dismissed the thought with energy. He rather relished accidents that brought about meetings with a woman as winning, as charming, as elegant as Madame Vernet; and then there was that deliciously intoxicating feeling of independence—no need to cut the interview short, no labored explanation to give Mademoiselle Céleste. Monsieur Bouchard was his own man now—for the first time, at fifty-four years of age. So he smiled benevolently, and said:

“I wish I might ask you to sit down, but at least you will grant me permission to call on you.”

“With pleasure,” replied Madame Vernet. “And since you won’t let me sit down—which, of course, wouldn’t be proper, and I wouldn’t commit the smallest impropriety for a million francs—at least let me walk about and look at your charming furnishings.”

Papa Bouchard made a heartfelt apology for the red-and-gold young ladies on the walls, who evidently shocked Madame Vernet extremely. He said he meant to take them down the next day. Madame Vernet replied with gentle severity that he ought to take them down that night. However, she went into raptures over “Kittens at Play” and “Socrates and His Pupils,” which gave Papa Bouchard a high idea of her intellectuality.

But in the midst of a learned dissertation on “The Coliseum by Moonlight” Madame Vernet’s eyes fell on the glittering paste necklace, which Monsieur Bouchard had left lying on the table. She picked it up gently—she did everything gently—and playfully clasping it round her neck, cried:

“How charming! I won’t ask you for whom this is intended; for a sister—a niece, perhaps. Lucky girl!”

“Indeed, it is not intended for anyone,” replied Monsieur Bouchard. “It is of trifling value—paste, at seventy-five francs to buy, and would sell for nothing.”

“Nevertheless, it is very pretty,” said Madame Vernet, looking at herself coquettishly in the mirror. And then, apparently forgetting all about the necklace, she confided to Monsieur Bouchard that she was so nervous at living alone—the only thing that reconciled her was that she had an uncle and an aunt living in the neighborhood who would watch over her. Monsieur Bouchard tried to reassure her, but Madame Vernet declined to be reassured. Her timidity was constitutional—she should never be courageous as other women, and so protesting, she gathered up her parasol and gloves, and with blushing apologies for her intrusion and a bashful invitation to Monsieur Bouchard to return her unique visit, made for the door.

Monsieur Bouchard was charmed, flattered, tickled and flustered beyond expression, but he was likewise terrified at the thought that Madame Vernet had evidently forgotten that she had the necklace clasped round her throat and was going off with it. Paste though it was, Monsieur Bouchard had no mind to let it go out of his own hands. He followed her to the door, saying, “Madame, you have probably forgotten——”

“Oh, no, I haven’t,” smilingly replied Madame Vernet; “I know my own apartment now—it is number nine.”

“But—but—you have inadvertently—er—a—” Poor Monsieur Bouchard mopped his forehead in his agony.

“Yes, quite inadvertently entered your apartment. Oh, how alarmed I was when I first saw you! But you were so kind. Forgive me, and don’t forget your promise to call. Good-bye.”

And just as Monsieur Bouchard had made up his mind to ask for the necklace she flitted out of the door.

Monsieur Bouchard sank, or rather fell, into a chair. His head was in a whirl. He felt as if the events of that day were beginning to be a little too much for him. Just at that moment Pierre appeared from no one could exactly say where.

“Come, now,” said that functionary, in a tone of what Monsieur Bouchard would have thought brazen familiarity the day before, “I know all about it, I saw the whole transaction; remember, Monsieur, we are pals now. She can’t get money on it any more than Madame de Meneval can, and she’ll be sure to turn up again. Oh, you’ll come out all right, Monsieur. Cheer up. We’ll live a merry life, and after all, it is something to be away from that dreary old hole in the Rue Clarisse. Just listen, if you please.”

Pierre ran to the window, threw it wide open, and the strains of rag time music from the music halls filled the room.

“Everything goes in rag time at this jolly place,” cried Pierre—and then that staid, sober and decorous valet of thirty years’ service, cut the pigeon wing, twirled around on one leg, with the other stuck stiffly out like a ballet dancer’s, and kissing his hand in the direction of Madame Vernet’s apartment, cried, “Oh, we’re a gay pair of boys! We mean to see life! And no peaching on each other!” And with ineffable impudence, he winked at Monsieur Bouchard.