He stopped in his picking, and leered up at me vaguely. He seemed utterly broken and forlorn.
“She will not return,” he said; and resumed his task. I stood some moments watching him. Suddenly he clasped his hands plaintively together and looked me again in the face.
“Why did she go at all?” he said. “Can monsieur tell me, for I forget?”
He put his fingers aimlessly, like an infant, to his head.
“I had a pride in her. She was beautiful and self-willed. Mon Dieu! but she would make me laugh or tremble, the rogue. Well, she is gone.”
Could it be that his every memory of his villainy was lost with his cherished tankards?
“What a love was mine,” he murmured. “I would have denied her nothing—in reason; and she has deserted me.”
“Monsieur,” I said, “do you remember me?”
“You, you!” he cried angrily—“what do I know or care about this Orson that springs upon me from the green? You need to be shaved and washed, monsieur.”
“Undoubtedly; if monsieur would provide me with the means?”