I joined Paragot. He said from where he stood by the door:—
"Good night, Madame la Comtesse."
She made no reply. Instinctively both of us lingered a second on the threshold, filling our eyes with the beauty and luxury that were all part and parcel of Joanna, and as the door closed behind us we felt like two bad angels turned out of Paradise.
CHAPTER XIV
I came across him the next afternoon sitting on a stone bench in the Luxembourg Gardens. His hat was slouched forward over his eyes. His hand supported his chin so that his long straggling beard protruded in a curious Egyptian horizontality. His ill-laced boots innocent as usual of blacking, for he would not allow Blanquette to touch them, were stuck out ostentatiously, and to the peril of the near passers-by. He had never during our acquaintance manifested any sense of the dandified; on our travels he had worn the casual, unnoticeable dress of the peasant, save when he had masqueraded in the pearl-buttoned velveteens; in London a swaggering air of braggadocio had set off his Bohemian garb: but never had the demoralised disreputability of Paragot struck me until I saw him in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Everything else wore a startlingly fresh appearance, after the heavy rains. The gravel walk had the prim neatness of a Peter de Hoogh garden path. The white balustrades and flights of steps around the great circle, the statuary and the fountains in the middle lake, flashed pure. The enormous white caps of nurses, their gay silk streamers fluttering behind them, the white-clad children, the light summer dresses of women; the patches of white newspaper held by other loungers on the seats; a dazzling bit of cirro-cumulus scudding across the clear Paris sky; the pale dome of the Panthéon rising to the East; the background of the Luxembourg itself in which one was only conscious of the high lights on the long bold cornices; all set the key of the picture and gave it symphonic value. The eye rejected everything but the whites and the pearl greys, subordinating all other tones to its impression of fantastic purity.
And there like an ink blot splashed on the picture, sat Paragot. The very foulest odd-volume of Montesquieu's "Esprit des Lois" which could be picked up on the quays lay unopened on his knee. Not until Narcisse, who was sleeping at his feet, jumped up and barked a welcome around me did Paragot notice my approach. He held out his hand, and the finger-nails seemed longer and dirtier than ever. He drew me down to the seat beside him.
"You were asleep when I ran in this morning, Master," said I apologetically, for it was the first time I had seen him that day.
"Since then I have been thinking, my little Asticot. It is a vain occupation for a May afternoon, and it makes your head ache. I should be much better employed carting manure for Madame Dubosc. We earned two francs. Do you remember?"