“My gran’pa,” corrected Mamouche.
“Yes, yes, your grandfather. He was handsome; I tell you, he was good-looking. And the way he could dance and play the fiddle and sing! Let me see, how did that song go that he used to sing when we went out serenading: ‘A ta—à ta—’
‘A ta fenêtre
Daignes paraître—tra la la la!’”
Doctor John-Luis’s voice, even in his youth, could not have been agreeable; and now it bore no resemblance to any sound that Mamouche had ever heard issue from a human throat. The boy kicked his heels and rolled sideward on his chair with enjoyment. Doctor John-Luis laughed even more heartily, finished the stanza, and sang another one through.
“That’s what turned the girls’ heads, I tell you, my boy,” said he, when he had recovered his breath; “that fiddling and dancing and tra la la.”
During the next hour the old man lived again through his youth; through any number of alluring experiences with his friend Théodule, that merry fellow who had never done a steady week’s work in his life; and Stéphanie, the pretty Acadian girl, whom he had never wholly understood, even to this day.
It was quite late when Doctor John-Luis climbed the stairs that led from the sitting-room up to his bedchamber. As he went, followed by the ever attentive Marshall, he was singing:
“A ta fenêtre
Daignes paraître,”