"We will all picnic together in the woods of Fontainebleau on Sunday," said he.
We picnic-ed. Fanchette had no shynesses. She found Paragot peculiarly diverting, and though I enjoyed the day prodigiously, I realised afterwards that I had spent most of it in the company of Blanquette.
"My son," said he, "there never was a model so like all the other models that have posed for the well-of-course-you-know-how-it-is, since the world began."
A week later, when I found my particular friend Ewing, whom as a tongue-tied Englishman I had relieved of many embarrassments, and for whom I had secured an easel, branding it myself in twenty places with his name, and for whom I had engineered a good position next to mine in the Life School—when I saw Ewing hugging Fanchette on the stairs, on the very landing sacred to my embraces, I knew that Paragot was right, and that Fanchette was just a fickle, naughty little model like the others. But if Paragot had not taken her measure before my eyes at Fontainebleau and made a figured drawing so to speak of her heart and soul, shewing their exiguous dimensions, I might have cast myself beneath the wheels of an omnibus like the pig Népomucène, or blacked the eyes of Ewing who was smaller than myself. As it was, I put my hands in my trousers' pockets and surveyed the abashed couple in Paragot's best manner.
"Amuse yourselves well, my children," I laughed, in French, and turned away heart-whole.
This is an instance of the wisdom of Paragot. He smiled on the vanity of my youth, and personally conducted me to the barrenness whither it led. In this particular case the result was more positive still. Ewing in admiration of my magnanimity at the time, and a fortnight later of my profound knowledge of women—for he in his turn witnessed the alien osculations of Fanchette—cultivated my friendship to the extent of urging me to spend some of the summer recess at his father's country vicarage in Somerset.
"But you'll have to get some other togs," said he, eyeing my attire dubiously. "If you come like that to church on Sunday, my governor would forget and want to baptise you. He was once a missionary, you know."
When I mentioned the invitation, Paragot insisted on acceptance.
"The Latin Quarter confers an exuberance of tone which conflicts with the reposeful ideal of manners required in the beau monde which I destined you to grace when I took you from the maternal soapsuds. You will find an English Parsonage exerts a repressive influence. But for Heaven's sake don't fall in love with Ewing's eldest sister, who, I am sure, is addicted to piety and good works. She will try to make a good work of you and thus all my labour will have been in vain."
In his heart, however, I believe he was immensely proud at having trained me to meet gentlefolk on more or less equal terms. Ewing's invitation was a tribute to himself. To fit me for church on Sunday and other functions of civilisation he took Ewing (as counsellor) and myself to a tailor's and plunged enthusiastically into the details of my outfit. I can see him now, shaggy and shabby, fingering stuffs with the anxious solicitude of a woman at a draper's counter.