The other grumbled beneath his breath.
“I hope Madame is well,” said Papadopoulos.
I said that she appeared so, when last I had the pleasure of seeing her. The dwarf turned to his friend.
“Monsieur has also done my cats the honour of attending a rehearsal. He has seen Hephaestus, and his tears have dropped in sympathy over the irreparable loss of my beautiful Santa Bianca.”
“I hope the talented survivors,” said I, “are enjoying their usual health.”
“My daily bulletin from my pupil and assistant, Quast, contains excellent reports. Prosit, Signore.”
It was only when I found myself at the table with the dwarf and his broken-nosed friend that I collected my wits sufficiently to realise the probable reason of his presence in Marseilles. The grotesque little creature had actually kept his ridiculous word. He, too, had come south in search of the lost Captain Vauvenarde. We were companions in the Fool Adventure. There was something mediaeval in the combination; something legendary. Put back the clock a few centuries and there we were, the Knight and the Dwarf, riding together on our quest, while the Lady for whose sake we were making idiots of ourselves was twiddling her fair thumbs in her tower far beyond the seas.
Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos broke upon this pleasing fancy by remarking again that Monsieur Saupiquet was a friend of Madame Brandt.
“He was with her at the time of her great bereavement.”
“Bereavement?” I asked forgetfully.