Chapter IV (2)

It chanced that not six feet away from the lady in blue, and behind a little curtain adroitly arranged by Gigi, the marble hand was enshrined. And strange as it will seem to you after all I have said, there was something interesting about it, something that would compel your pleased attention, even if you were an artist, or only a lover of art. Paul Manship liked parts of it; and a painter friend of mine said—but no matter about that now. Gigi had poured his whole Mediterranean soul into his part of the work, and I had designed, as best I could, the open book and the drapery. To be candid, I had taken real pleasure in finishing the marble, with the desired _morbidezza_. I had enjoyed every stroke I had given to that most beautiful stone, for Gigi had kept my tools in exquisite condition all the time. He seemed to know just how I wanted every tool to feel in my hand when I was modelling the marble. I longed to show the girl what we had done for her. But how could I do that, after all I had said to her, a year ago, and all she had said to me, to-day? Was there not a certain sprightly finality in her remarks? With decision, she took the box from my hands and entrusted it to her Jack.

“_Au voir_,” she sang to me, over her shoulder. “_Au plaisir de vous voir!_ But I shall come again, if I may. Very soon, _n’est-ce-pas_?” The good Missouri foundation was quite evident in her farewell address.

Naturally, I was nonplussed. Think of it, I, a rising—yes, you might say, an arrived—young sculptor, in Manhattan, and she, a chit of a Chittenden from Missouri! But my chagrin was as nothing to Gigi’s. For of course I had not meant to pocket that money myself, just for a few hours’ pleasant work on a bit of pink marble. I was intending it as a sort of well-earned present for Gigi, who has, you must know, a rather large flock of kids to be shepherded up to the highest pastures of our American democracy. There was one little fellow named Mario, the most gifted of all, and he had been hard hit by infantile paralysis; we were planning to use this money for his special education in art. And now the chit had left us planted there, with nothing but a raw _n’est-ce-pas_ for our pains. It served me right, I admit. But what of Gigi, and the lad Mario? Why, Mario could model you a better rabbit out of yesterday’s chewing-gum than Schneider could ever evolve from the fairest block of marble in Milan Cathedral. That girl had talked of elevating American art; and here she was, actively stifling American genius. I could not meet Gigi’s eye. Perhaps, after all, there was no great contrast between the young lady in blue and the Senator, except on the surface. The world was probably full of chits and Bullwinkles.

That afternoon, the dreaded sitting began badly. The Senator missed my wife and her ministrations. He was writing his memoirs, and wanted to refresh his memory about his third tariff speech. His secretary was no good as a reader, he complained, but my wife had seemed to have some sense about her. He couldn’t understand why a woman of sense should want to go gallivanting. His manner implied that it was wholly my fault that my wife should prefer Bar Harbor realities to Little Rock recollections. Half-peevishly and half-humorously, he writhed about in his chair, like a bad little boy grown old. He did not like the cigar he had brought, and scorned the best I could offer. He drove me to despair by presenting square front view when I needed to verify dewlaps in profile; he brushed off imaginary flies from his Roman nose, just as if my studying his nose had made it itch. He attempted every grotesque perversity in the sitter’s calendar, and even invented some original bedevilments of his own. He turned his attention to my rendering of the details of his attire, telling me that he had always _tried_ to tie his tie as tight as he could get it, and that if I didn’t mind (indeed, I did mind!) he wanted to have that third button of his waistcoat fastened up, if the dam’ thing was to go down to posterity in imperishable bronze. Alas, my sitter was eluding me again. His reality as a human being was hidden from me in a fog of momentary misconduct.

Suddenly the Senator straightened. He was looking toward the corner where a stricken Gigi was still hovering about our rejected collaborative masterpiece, and contemplating the wreck of Mario’s future. “Where on God’s footstool did you get that hand?” shouted the Senator, the big W-shaped vein on his left temple swelling in his excitement.

“Gigi and I made it,” I replied, calmly accepting the fact that either the Senator or I had at last gone crazy under the strain of the Bullwinkle bust. The man had never before shown a spark of any interest whatsoever in my works, whether clay or plaster, bronze or marble. I wondered whether a strait-jacket would have been a good thing to include in my studio equipment, but I was not quite sure which one of us needed it the more, so bewildered was I by the change that had seized on the Senator. He bounded from his chair, snatching the ground, one might say, from under Gigi’s feet.

“That hand,” bellowed Mr. Bullwinkle, shaking his forefinger at me as if I were his political opponent, “that hand is a fine thing! I tell you, it’s a great thing! It’s the best thing you’ve got in your whole shooting-gallery, and don’t you start in to deny it! I’d rather have that one piece of alabaster marble than the whole of Westminster Abbey!”

To my amazement, the Senator stood at bay over the marble, as if it were a prize to be defended against all comers. He fairly flamed with intensity. I never saw a man more alive, more tingling with a sense of being alive. For the first time, I could learn, from my own eyes and not from historic hearsay, something of his power over his fellow-men. His eyes looked large, his jowls turned taut, his upstanding hair, which I had thought almost ridiculous, became sublime. He seemed a creature expressly framed for the applause of listening senates. In a twinkling, and when I least expected it, I saw more of the real man than I had found out in all my passionate searching during those frustrate sittings. No doubt, my searching had helped toward my present illuminated vision; that vision was but the culmination, the happy ending, of my quest. Like Childe Roland, I had been expecting too much, perhaps, from my Dark Tower. What a fool I had been to suppose that the Senator’s germ of greatness lay in some noble difference between himself and others! Why, it was plain as day that his greatness lay, not in his difference from the rest of the world, oh, no, not that; his greatness was mainly in his rich, happy, sympathetic commonness. He was not so much a man above men, as a man among men. My mistake was, I had been trying to win the Senator; I should have let him try to win me, according to his bent and usage. So I sprang back to my modelling, and let him be himself. It did not matter to me, now, that he was striding, gesticulating, quivering; at heart, I have always believed, with George de Forest Brush, that a model on the move, and really alive, is far better to work from than one sitting still as a sod.

And now, as I studied my man anew, I perceived all at once that a dozen good dominating strokes rightly placed on my clay could turn it from a mess to a masterpiece. I became two persons, as every artist at times must. Each was sharply awake. One of these two was modelling for dear life on that portrait, smiting the thing now here, now there; unhasting, unresting; gathering up rich handfuls of all the released individuality of greatness that I now saw radiating from a transfigured Senatorial countenance, and compressing that individuality into clay for the plaster-moulder’s sacrifice and the bronze-founder’s furnace. The other man in me was listening amiably to a Bullwinkle speech of self-revelation. I suppose that under my skin there was even a third person, ironically reminding me that it was never _my_ hand that had touched the button to switch all this new light on a stale matter. It was another hand, a lady’s hand, a marble hand, too; and a hand rejected by a chit. Such reminders drive a man to humility, even while he is winning the game. For I _was_ winning; there could be no doubt of that, now.

“You young artist fellers,” the Senator was saying, vehemently, “of course you all think of me as a tough old politician. So I am, and so I want to be! But the mistake you make is, thinking I’m nothing else. That young Mather that painted me was just the same. He made a swell portrait of me, of course, red plush curtain and all;—I know enough not to deny that. But he wasn’t so much interested in me as he was in his way of painting me. And it shows in his work, sticks out all over!”

I took to heart this luminous bit of art-criticism while the Senator ran on. “And I can tell you, young man, that this hand carries me back in a way you don’t dream of. You don’t even guess at the sort of feeling I have when I look at it and touch it! You’re incapable of knowing! You’re not old enough or wise enough or kind enough, perhaps! You’re too college-sure in your own way of feeling to care a continental about what _I_ feel!”

I could not help seeing that some strong emotion had visited his heart. But I thought he’d like it best if I didn’t say much; besides, I had my work to do. The Bullwinkle Building must not lack its crowning touch through any failure of mine to seize the supreme moment. So I calmly swept my big tool alongside of the Senator’s clay face, half-erasing a thousand fussy unnecessary markings from its map. My erstwhile sitter was still hovering excitedly over the marble. He had nothing whatever to say about _morbidezza_.

“Look here,” he exclaimed, turning upon me with a gesture of real dignity, “you probably don’t see, or imagine you see, any resemblance between this great paw of mine and that lovely lady’s hand! No, I wouldn’t expect you to!”

Now I had often observed that the Senator’s hand was still handsome and energetic. An unusual hand, I had thought, for a politician. It was uninvaded either by chalky deposit on the knuckles, or fatty increment on the fingers, or even by swollen veins on the back. Hence I was glad to admit the likeness he saw; and weighing my words, while I laid in a good strong dark under a resounding lock of hair he had just tossed up from his forehead, I congratulated him on his artistic discernment. He shook off the compliment with a growl, though I know he liked it.

“But what I want to know is,” he went on, “how the deuce did _you_ happen to make this lovely thing? Is it for sale? What price, f.o.b., young feller, what price?”

Gigi leaked out from his burlap. I could feel his eyes imploring me, for Mario’s sake, to play my part as a man!

The Senator noted my hesitation. “Isn’t it for sale?”

“Upon my word,” I replied, intent on fixing the Bullwinkle nostril for posterity, “I hardly know whether it’s for sale or not.” For the moment I didn’t care, a happy issue out of the Bullwinkle bust being from every point of view more important to me, just then, than all the marble hands from here to Genoa.

“With the good help of Gigi here, I made the thing for a lady, who doesn’t seem to want it, now it’s done. She’s been to Europe since she ordered it, and she’s gotten herself educated, so she thinks, to higher forms of art.” Perhaps I spoke a trifle bitterly.

“What’s her fool name?” The Senator was still enkindled. I was surprised to see with what tenderness he was passing his fingers over the surface of that marble;—and he shouting the while as if we were all at a caucus!

“Her name?” I hesitated, even then desiring to protect the name of beauty, and to pardon the grotesque shabbiness of that girl’s act in taking me at my word. “Let’s see. Oh, it was a Miss Chittenden, as I remember it. Just a chit from Missouri.”

“Chittenden,” returned the Senator, with a puzzled air, “Chittenden?” Then a great light broke upon him. “Chittenden nothing! It’s Clarenden, that’s what it is. And if she told you anything else, she’s sailing under false pretences. Just like her, too!”

“No, indeed,” I interposed, warmly, “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that—there must be something she’d draw the line at. Come to think of it, Clarenden _was_ the name she gave.”

“A long young dame,” pursued Bullwinkle, “blue eyes, you know, and a way with her? Mariellen Clarenden?”

I nodded. The Senator leaped in triumph. He turned upon me with the friendliest smile in the world. “What were you charging her?”

“Four hundred dollars. And I don’t sell it for a cent less to anybody.”

“Give you five hundred! Done!” The Senator snatched a checkbook and a fountain pen from the region of that waistcoat button we had lately wrangled over. I had no idea his motions could be so swift and so majestic. Perhaps I might have stayed his hand, in some effete idea of ethics, or professional etiquette; but Gigi’s inexorable eye was on me, dangling Mario before my hesitating soul. I compromised by taking the check, with vague thankfulness, and laying it on the table. I told myself I would think it over. It might be that five hundred dollars was not too much for a master-work, preferred above all Westminster Abbey.

“You wonder at me,” the Senator went on, with a guffaw that was like a sob. “Well, then, sit up and wonder all you like. Sometimes I wonder at myself. This hand—” he stroked the marble with the same sort of reverence the girl had shown about that plaster cast. “Oh, hang it, boy, we’re all human, even if you are studio-bred-and-broke, God help you, and I’m from Missouri! Listen, kid. I had a sister, a twin sister. A smart Aleck like you would probably say it sounds like opera-buff, or a dime novel, but it’s just plain fact, right out of my own life. And I was fonder of that girl than of any other human being that ever lived. This necktie you’ve been fussing over because it’s too tight and hard, you said;—well, it’s black, for her. And black _is_ tight and hard, sometimes. Ah, well!” The Senator resolutely put away sadness, and again stretched out his own fine capable hand.

“My sister had the prettiest little hand in the county. County! Her hand was known all over the State, and many a young newspaper feller touched it—on paper—in the old days. Foot, too!” He meditated a moment on his own very good-looking shoes. “After she married Clarenden, the big railroad man, we saw less of each other, of course, but we were chums to the last. And the instant my eye lit on this lovely work, this masterpiece, though I say it that shouldn’t, I knew there was something in it for me! I didn’t quite know what, of course, until I found out that Mariellen was mixed up in it, and then ’twas clear as day. Had you copy a plaster cast, didn’t she?” He chuckled with pleasure in his perspicacity. “We Senators know all about plaster casts and death-masks and that sort of thing. Unless we want to miss a trick, we have ’em done to us, as soon as the time comes. But what I don’t understand is why Mariellen got cold feet! She’s a girl of some sense, I tell you, or was, until she got a hankering for New York, and what she calls the higher things in art!”

The Senator’s last words mimicked to perfection both the girl and myself. It was that kind of mimicry which creates good understanding, and leaves a smile, not a sting. Oh, I could see how he, like the girl, captivated mankind!

“Even now,” he continued, “she’s my favorite of the whole bunch, and they’ve all of ’em got plenty of the Bullwinkle pep. Some face, that girl, hey? Pretty ain’t the word!”

No, it wasn’t the word. But I couldn’t give any one word that would really cover the case, I admitted.

“Mariellen gets the better of everybody. She even puts it over on a smart artist like you. I’d like to take her across my knee! And before I’ve finished with her, I shall make her feel like thirty cents about this job. Gave the marble heart to my marble hand, did she? She’ll be wishing she kept it, the moment she sees I’ve got it. But mark my words, it’ll never be hers, until after I’ve taken the Big Subway for good and for all. And if she tries to bamboozle me out of what I’ve bought and paid for, I’ll—”

A peal of the bell and voices in the anteroom caused the speaker to suspend sentence, and I slipped out to find, in eager converse with Gigi, the young person from Missouri. Was the sky raining coincidences, that day? With a gesture absurdly like her uncle’s, she was drawing from that much-embroidered handbag of hers a checkbook not unlike his own in general effect. Had Shakespeare been there, he would have indited a sonnet to the checkbook of beauty, and its likeness to that of brains and power.

“Of course,” said the young lady, giving me at once her charming smile and her signed check, “I knew that _you_ knew, from what I said when I went away from here this morning, that I meant to come back just as soon as I could, to deliver the goods, and to get the goods.” What I had seen of her uncle helped me to recognize a genuine emotion hiding behind the flippancy of her words. I freely confess that if my wife or my sister had said or done just what Miss Clarenden did, I would have found it preposterous, alarming, in bad taste. But that girl had some strange power to make one see at once that what she did was simple and natural; the best thing in the circumstances, and therefore not foolish or ill-bred.

“I know you’ll understand, the moment I explain: I’ve always said to myself that the man who carved that Dancer would understand a lot. Well, when I came here this morning, I simply couldn’t shake Jack. He stuck to my skirts like a burr. You know we’re to be married in the autumn.” The pink roses in her cheeks flamed into American Beauties for an instant, and then became themselves again, in a way that I’ve often wished might be managed on the stage.

“Jack has nothing in the world but what he earns. To be sure, he earns a lot, being—no, no, not a plumber, but a very, very civil engineer.” Her time-worn jests seemed dewy-fresh as they fell from her lips. Witty as well as beautiful, I thought. Oh, I admit my weakness!

Miss Clarenden continued her explanation. “Very likely, though, we shall have to economize, at first. And I didn’t want Jack to see me spend four hundred dollars right off bang, the very day after we landed, even for something I long for as I do for that marble hand; real art, too. You see, Jack got awfully gloomy over that last dozen pairs of gloves I got at the Bon Marché, the day before we sailed. Said he feared that at first he couldn’t give me all I’d been accustomed to, and so on. And, honestly, I was afraid that he’d be doing a bit of mental arithmetic right here in your studio, and doing it wrong! Saying to himself that if twenty-four kid gloves cost a hundred francs, why should one marble hand cost so many hundred dollars, or something like that!” I saw that the tears were very near those laughing eyes of hers, but she went bravely on. “Jack doesn’t know much about art yet, but I’m going to explain it all to him, the _morbidezza_ and everything. And I’m just crazy to see what you’ve done for me.”

Her voice with its smiles and tears floated in to Senator Bullwinkle as I led her toward the work of her hope. The marble was fairly heavy, but the Senator was more than fairly strong, and in my absence, he had gathered it up between his hands, and had sat down to muse upon it. In fact, it lay across his knees, just where he had said he would like to take Mariellen. I don’t know how, but he presently succeeded in making a place for both. I think Mariellen helped him.

Of course it was the Senator who kept the masterpiece, the buccaneer in him prizing it all the more when he learned from a grateful Gigi the origin of the raw material. He tells me he doesn’t care a whoop whether the work elevates American art or not; it elevates him. Mariellen admits it’s better so, since the lad Mario is the gainer by the one hundred dollars with which the Senator had built up the price. To clinch the matter, she wanted, for Mario’s sake, to add her own check to her uncle’s, her very first glance at that boy’s amazing sculpture in various lowly substances having convinced her of the wisdom of such a step. But I prevailed upon her to wait a year, at least; and that part does not come into this tale, at all.

“Ah, well, there are more ways than one to elevate art, or anything else. It’s up to Mario, now,” blithely remarked the young lady in blue.

“C’EST UNE TAUPE”

I feel sure that everybody, at least everybody who _is_ anybody, really knows, in the bottom of his heart, just what a _taupe_ is. But in case there should be any person with such weighty world affairs on his mind that he could not possibly move them around to discover hidden among them an insignificant matter like a _taupe_, I will say that a _taupe_ is a small furry thing that burrows in the ground. By no means an unfashionable creature, I assure you! Its color is always modish. Its skins, when collected by hundreds and thousands, go to make up what I am informed are “among the most authoritative fur garments of the coming season.” In short, a _taupe_ is a mole, all told.

Also, I am reasonably certain that most of us, if we should stop to consider the subject, would understand perfectly the nature of a _limace_. A slimy, limy _limace_! Its very name tells its story. It is not exactly one of the “slithy toves” of the old song, but they may all have had similar ancestors. And if you have guessed that a _limace_ is a slug, poor thing,—a big slug, no more and no less,—you are entirely right. So there you have the two characters, the mole, the slug; the furry, fashionable _taupe_, the slippery yet sticky _limace_.

In the Bois de Meudon, on the most beautiful summer morning in the world, a _limace_ was lying curled up like a thick brown half-moon on a bright green leaf. In its sluggish way, it was coquetting with the sunbeams. The _limace_ was in love with life, and at peace with all the earth. So were the little Parisians who had come out from the city to make holiday. At first there were not many of them; only M. Petitpot, the kind, red-eyed mason of the rue Delambre; Mme. Petitpot with the baby, in his straw hat built like a life-preserver; the good grandmother, not ashamed of her white cap; and the boy Pierre Petitpot, in his newest black apron. There were also the two doubly-opening baskets for the luncheon. M. Petitpot himself carried the basket that had the bread and the salad, with the two bottles of red wine slanted in, one at each end. But the grandmother kept fast hold of the smaller basket, because that one contained a truly magnificent roasted chicken, wrapped in a napkin. What an aroma, my friends! A _déjeuner sur l’herbe_ was contemplated. Messrs. Manet and Monet are not the only artists of the _déjeuner sur l’herbe_.

Presently other Parisians came, from various quarters of the city, and from various businesses. All were seeking a little Sunday happiness in the open. They were not really familiar with the secrets of the wood, as you shall see. But they had curiosity and discernment, and these two, keeping together, will go far toward finding knowledge. Unlike English people, these French persons chatted with each other, without mistrust. Also, they revealed the beauties of nature to each other. How dazzling and glorious were the clouds that day! The grocer’s lady pointed out to Mme. Petitpot that the good God must surely possess a giant egg-whip, to be able to produce a _méringue_ as colossal and light as those masses of cloud over there! And Mme. Petitpot had replied that eggs were better and cheaper, now that it was June, but that her own egg-beater had a kink in it, so that she was about to buy another.

Black-aproned Pierre was a pale bright-eyed child with a bulging forehead, and hands that looked as if they wanted to play the piano or something. Easy to see that he was predestined for the paths of learning. _Per aspera ad astra_; the latter for Pierre, the former for his parents. Even for this one holiday, they had not been able to separate him from his new “Petit Atlas du Monde”; he hugged it so tightly that the crimson cover had already stained his hands, freshly washed that very morning. His delighted glance skipped like a bird from tree to bush. He nodded his head in smiling ecstasy when the grocer’s lady expressed that airy fantasy of hers as to the clouds.

But it was one of the later comers, a pink-sashed little girl from the Montrouge quarter, who first saw the _limace_, and shouted aloud in joyous fright. “What a droll of a beast! I beg of thee, Mamma, regard me that!”

All the world pressed forward to inspect the _limace_. There were some who even had the hardihood to touch the creature with little sticks. “Hold, hold, my infant! _Faut pas la toucher!_ Perhaps it is a poisonous one, _hein_? Demand of thy papa whether it is envenomed.”

By now, quite a little crowd had gathered. One would say, amateurs in _limaçonnerie_! Papa, not knowing in the least whether it was envenomed or otherwise, preferred not to make any statement before the other Parisians, who, if the truth were discovered, were no better informed than he himself as to the nature of the thing there. Strange as it may seem, those Parisians were really less wise about the _limace_ than you and I are, to-day! For not one of them really knew that all of them were looking at a _limace_. But they one and all wanted to talk about it, solo, fugue, and chorus; and they did not know how best to mention it. Now it is absurd to keep on calling a thing _la chose_. So at last some one asked aloud, as all had been asking within, “What is it that that is, that that?”

Ah, if only M. J. Henri Fabre had been there, M. Fabre, the “insects’ Homer”! But M. Fabre was far away, and no one answered for him. There was a pause. Parisians hate a pause. The day had begun so joyous, and there they all were, pausing. Insupportable! A pretty lady with a primrose-colored parasol said that if it were a serpent, now, she would be able to tell you. She felt herself something of a connoisseur in serpents; there had been a serpent at the last _pique-nique_ she had attended. The gentleman on whose arm she was leaning said, with emotion, “Ah, I can well believe that, Mademoiselle!” Then everybody laughed a merry “_Hé, hé!_” But all this graceful _badinage_ brought them no nearer to knowledge. Hence those who really thirsted for knowledge were glad when the white-capped grandmother Petitpot, with proud beady eyes, pushed forward pale little Pierre with his bulging forehead. In fine, our Pierre, a child well instructed, could inform those ladies.

Appalling yet entrancing moment for black-aproned Pierre! He clasped his thin little Atlas of the World against his stomach, and silently prayed for knowledge to descend upon him from on high. Then he looked earnestly down on the _limace_, to put himself _en rapport_ with the creature in her underworld life.

A touch of rose pink bloomed a moment on his sallow cheek. “I think,” he said, in his eager fluty voice of a born “teacher’s favorite,” “I think, yes, I believe well!—_c’est une taupe_.” The very utterance of his faith created in him a faith more abundant. He nodded his head sagely, even boldly. “_Ah, oui, Madame, sans doute, c’est une taupe._”

Swiftly the words of the young scholar penetrated all the little groups of Parisians. _Une taupe!_ Lady and gentleman, girl and boy, mason and grocer, one after the other took up that goodly revelation. “_C’est une taupe!_” Some repeated it a little sadly, as if it were a mistake, or at least an indelicacy, on the part of the _taupe_ not to have been something else. Others repeated it with exquisite gayety, as if a _taupe_ were the one object of joy the world had waited for, until then. Still others repeated it without passion and without surprise, as if a _taupe_ were no more than should have been expected at such a time. But in one way or another, they all repeated it. _C’est une taupe._ Even those who had never had so much as a cornerwise glance at the _limace_ went their ways, saying, with a fine discriminating wave of the hand, “_une taupe_.” Indeed, not having seen the _limace_, they were naturally far more confident than those who had really gone quite near to that brown half-moon on the green leaf, and touched it with twigs. The distribution of knowledge is a moving spectacle, is it not?

My friend who was beside me in that lovely wood, with the blue sky above the waving branches, and with the flower-like children springing up from the grass, and the autumn-leaf grandmothers walking abroad with baskets for the _déjeuner_, suddenly asked me why I was laughing like that, and the tears running down my cheeks.

“You do not know why!” I answered. “Oh, surely if you know anything at all, you must know! It is because I can see, at this moment, this same spectacle shaping itself everywhere on our planet; yes, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, on Capricornus and on Cancer, and even in the Equatorial belt where the lazy peoples live. Everywhere, everywhere on this round globe of ours, there is a poor _limace_ among the green leaves, and no one knows what she is; but everywhere there is a good old grandmother, pushing forward a pale little Pierre with a bay-window brow, to tell the world, ‘_C’est une taupe._’ And the world listens, and repeats, and so becomes wise.”

My friend, a sadly literal person, objected. It couldn’t be like that, among the Esquimaux, in their igloos. And I had all I could do to prove that among the Esquimaux, in their igloos, it was not only just like that, but more so. On the return boat for Paris, we were still arguing the question. The beady-eyed little grandmother had already helped to remove the life-preserving hat from the Petitpot baby. She continued to guard her basket, which now held only an aroma, and, please God, the _carcasse_ for the morrow’s soup. Black-aproned Pierre, with an unrelenting grip upon his Atlas of the World, laid his sleepy, knowledge-burdened head against her shoulder. Mme. Petitpot whispered over that head into the grandmother’s ear, and the grandmother nodded and smiled. The two were agreed that it was truly a miracle; in all that fine company, the boy was the only one who knew. Surely there was a future for this child, already so well instructed! And with what agreeable courtesy he had said it, “_Madame, c’est une taupe!_”

The women smiled, yet there was something sad and lofty in their smiling. For they knew that they were guarding between them a very precious vessel, and they prayed for strength equal to the honored task. The evening breeze freshened sweetly; and in case that fabled Gallic monster, a _courant d’air_, might come stalking through the boat, the grandmother spread a fold of her voluminous black skirt over Pierre’s bare knees.

THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS