Aristide’s anxieties grew heavier. It was November, when knickerbockered and culture-seeking tourists no longer fill the cheap hotels of Paris. The profits of the Agence Pujol dwindled. Aristide lived on bread and cheese, and foresaw the time when cheese would be a sinful luxury. Meanwhile Fleurette had her nourishing food, and grew more like the ghost of a lily every day. But her eyes followed Aristide, wherever he went in her presence, as if he were the god of her salvation.
One day Aristide, with an unexpected franc or two in his pocket, stopped in front of a bureau de tabac. A brown packet of caporal and a book of cigarette-papers—a cigarette rolled—how good it would be! He hesitated, and his glance fell on a collection of foreign stamps exposed in the window. Among them were twelve Honduras stamps all postmarked. He stared at them, fascinated.
“Mon brave Aristide!” he cried. “If the bon Dieu does not send you these vibrating inspirations, it is because you yourself have already conceived them!”
He entered the shop and emerged, not with caporal and cigarette-papers, but with the twelve Honduras stamps.
That night he sat up in his little bedroom at No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré, until his candle failed, inditing a letter in English to Fleurette. At the head of his paper he wrote “Hotel Rosario, Honduras.” And at the end of the letter he signed the name of Reginald Batterby. Where Honduras was, he had but a vague idea. For Fleurette, at any rate, it would be somewhere at the other end of the world, and she would not question any want of accuracy in local detail. Just before the light went out he read the letter through with great pride. Batterby alluded to the many letters he had posted from remote parts of the globe, gave glowing forecasts of the fortune that Honduras had in store for him, reminded her that he had placed sufficient funds for her maintenance in the hands of Aristide Pujol, and assured her that the time was not far off when she would be summoned to join her devoted husband.
“Mme. Bidoux was right,” said he, before going to sleep. “This is the only way to make her happy.”
The next day Fleurette received the letter. The envelope bore the postmarked Honduras stamp. It had been rubbed on the dusty pavement to take off the newness. It was in her husband’s handwriting. There was no mistake about it—it was a letter from Honduras.
“Are you happier now, little doubting female St. Thomas that you are?” cried Aristide when she had told him the news.
She smiled at him out of grateful eyes, and touched his hand.
“Much happier, mon bon ami,” she said, gently.