Chapter I

[Being a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris to his friend Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, County Wicklow.]

Maison du bon Tabac,
May 15th, 1905.

Dear Paddy,--You will have seen it in the papers, if papers still cross the pass to those ancient halls which enshroud the immortal glories of the clan O’Connell--but, my dear Paddy, you will have little idea of its meaning or be as far from the truth of it as Paul Delmet from a parson’s cassock or the Chevalier Honoré de Villefort from the castles in Spain which the entirely disinterested Baroness has lately bequeathed to him.

I can hear your comments, your wisdom, can imagine your displeasure. What--a man who should be riding his hack in the Row, putting a yacht into commission at Cowes--or at the worst buying a thousand guinea motor-car to carry his friends from their creditors--this man living in a hovel at Montmartre, spending his money upon chansonniers, grisettes, cocottes and all that paste-board riff-raff which has made the Quat-Z-Arts famous wherever the American language is not spoken. This is what you say, my dear Paddy--this is what my beloved cousin Arthur is saying when he tells himself that in twelve months’ time the curtain falls upon the play, and he, the patron, walks off with the proceeds.

Be sure that I forget this unpleasant truth whenever life will permit me to do so. The thought for to-morrow is not often the spectre at the feasts over which Marcelle presides, nor one which Mimi La Godiche--which is to say Mimi the Simpleton--long permits to remain in heads as empty as her own. I am to lose my fortune of seven thousand pounds a year if, at the mature age of twenty-five, I am not earning five hundred pounds a year by my own labour and talent. So be it, Paddy. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we will dine. This fortune may carry some little sunshine even to the benighted halls of the Agile Wolf. I make no complaint of destiny--nor of Mimi La Godiche, whose friends robbed me of a trumpery cigarette-box which is again upon my table while I write this letter.

I say that I make no complaint of destiny--why should I? Let me but open this window, upon which Gabriel de Math has drawn in the best French chalk an impassioned sketch of an empty champagne bottle--let me but open it and the world is at my feet--Paris of the golden domes, Paris of the dark eyes and the meaner streets--a great black Paris, a Paris of woods and gardens and river, of the mills which grind the grisettes’ corn, of the hives whence issue the noctambules and night hawks, whose prey has gossamer wings of greenbacks, whose morrow is never because of the eternal to-day. All this lies in the great bowl before me. I pour my fortune into the abyss and they strive for it far below, in a glitter of brass and spangles, in a flutter of white petticoats and silken hose and shirt fronts which would be better at the laundry. But none knows the truth--I am the mad Englishman who neither paints nor plays. And I am as poor as the rest of them--and God knows how poor that is.

So, you see, Paddy, I have my consolations, and among others, as the papers have told you, the friendship of Mimi La Godiche. What a fine old cardboard tragedy they have made of it all! Did I not sally forth at midnight, armed with a blunderbuss and a scimitar to cut down the apaches who lurk beneath the shadow of la Galette? Did I not enter a café which the police are afraid to enter? and did not these strong hands drag therefrom the brave _fille_ who had returned my stolen diamonds to me and was in danger because of her honesty? News “fitting to the night,” upon my word, “black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.” Would for the sake of this Hector that it were the truth and nothing but the truth--but, my dear Paddy, there’s little of the truth in it at all, as these indentures shall bear witness. It’s as false as Fifine of the Alcazar, and not half as pretty.

You will remember that I have known Mimi La Godiche for some three months now. She is a pretty, round-limbed blonde, with a mop of tousled hair, eyes full of “fair speechless messages,” the reticence of Cleopatra, the youth of Cupid, the devilry of the whole Rue Champollion in the shape of her bewitching neck.

I saw her first at the Fête de Neuilly. She stood upon a platform with a strong man, a juggler and a clown; and when she sang I determined that she should come to the Quat-Z-Arts and sing to the Bohemians of the Butte. Montmartre gave her the cold shoulder. Can you wonder that an audience which has heard Odette Dulac sing “Je suis Bête” should decline to hear Mimi La Godiche warble “Toujours l’amour,” in a dress that makes her look like a kitchen-maid and a voice that would befit a Sunday-school? She came, she saw, she did not conquer. I offered to send her back to the lion-tamer, who is to her father, mother, uncle and brother--she declined the invitation, preferring to sit to Desmond Barrymore, the American, and not a little delighted to earn her bread at so light a task.

Now, my dear Paddy, you must tell me, for by all the kingdoms of the grisettes, I swear that I do not know what my obligations to this waif and stray may be. Must I pose as the philanthropist of the books, and send her to a convent at Brussels or a finishing school at Brighton? Should I plod patiently beneath a soiled genealogical tree to discover if, in some remote slum of Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles, there may not be living a venerable kinswoman, perhaps newly released from prison, who will harbour her? Or shall I remember that the devil knows his own and will not forget her?

I cannot tell you. She is earning an honest living with Desmond Barrymore, and will come to no harm there. Life and laughter and the light of cities are her whole existence. And imagine the talk of the Rue Pigalle repeated in the cloister or the argot Montmartrois at church parade in that “fayre town of Brighton!” It can’t be done, Paddy. I am the victim of my own enthusiasm, and Mimi will return to her lion-tamer no more.

Meanwhile, there are the thieves. The papers have told you that I, a young English student, studying the sculptor’s art in the great ateliers of Montmartre, was robbed at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball of a gold and diamond cigarette-case worth a hundred pounds. At the best it is a half truth--at the worst an ignorant lie.

None knows better than yourself, Paddy, the deserved fame of the Quat-Z-Arts Ball. Here America does not come, nor Sir Lord Moneybags enter. There is no ticket more prized in all Paris than a ticket for the Quat-Z-Arts; there is not a festivity in any ballroom in Europe more decently conducted for those who see eye to eye with these Bohemians of the Butte, and understand them. True, Venus in many shapes rides sky-high upon the gilded floats; you sup upon the floor from the contents of paper bags thrown down to you from the galleries above; but of the vulgar things to be done in London or New York by those who are merely vulgarian, you do none at all. So, my dear Paddy, I certainly did not lose my pretty cigarette-case (given to me, you remember, by old Bardon, the banker, for dragging his beloved “cheeild” from the Solent) at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball; nor would anyone outside a lunatic asylum puzzle his head to say where I did lose it.

Perhaps it was in a cab on my way to the Abbaye de Thélème, that sordid supper-house of the Butte, to which one resorts in sheer despair of sleep and solitude; perhaps later on at the Capitol, to which, I remember, Mistress Mimi would be conducted with Amé Decroix, the poet; Honoré de Villefort, the Chevalier; and that bald-headed old rogue of a perpetual mendicant, Georges Oleander, who writes the revues. I neither know nor care; for my memories are of a night of life, and colour, and music; of a scene glittering with dresses and the pictures that great artists have given to their fellows--of music which should have moved the feet of every dancing faun that ever trod a pedestal--of wit and laughter, the veritable _elixir vitæ_.

This is no psalm-singing screed that I write to you, Paddy, nor are you the man for the pæans of self-righteousness. I will confess without shame to certain _bons moments_. Though I am not, and never have been, the lover of Mimi La Godiche, there have been instants of the madness in which I have played a madman’s part.

But Mimi neither misunderstands me nor is misled. Did I but drop the shabbiest of handkerchiefs, she would become my mistress to-morrow; but I have no intention of soiling fine linen in this way, nor do I contemplate such a charming _ménage_ as she would certainly disgrace. When I embraced her at the Quat-Z-Arts, the floats of my Lady Venus were already sky-high and the parquet a sea of billowy chiffon--but I did not do so to give her an opportunity of stealing my cigarette-case (as that old blackguard Georges Oleander will have it), nor will all the _avocats_ in Paris convince me that this was the moment of my loss. No, my dear friend, it was at the Abbaye, I repeat, and if not at the Abbaye, then at the Capitol.

I am asking you to keep this fact in mind that what follows after may be better understood. You know me too well to suppose that I would have cried to high Heaven for the loss of a twopenny-halfpenny diamond box, or even be complaining of it to any man. But it was my misfortune to be asked for a cigarette out of that same by the prince and father of all beggars, Maître Georges Oleander aforesaid, and so, in a moment of surprise, I discovered the loss.

What next is the tale, Paddy? You will guess it first time--that Mimi La Godiche had thrown her fair arms about me, not in an ecstasy of love or passion, but purely to pocket the case and enjoy the contents at her leisure. This I had from the Chevalier Villefort not a week ago. On Sunday I learned for the first time the true value of a mendacious tongue and what it may mean even here on the “mountain” whence you look down upon the domes of Paris.

The scandal was everywhere. Remember that there is in Montmartre a great colony of artists, musicians and writers, not less honest, not less clean-living than the inhabitants of many a sanctimonious town in the country of your oppressor. These may esteem the marriage-tie lightly; but they hold love to be a sacred thing, and they would no more think of robbing their neighbour than of shooting the Pope.

These had been good friends to Mimi La Godiche because of my patronage. But no sooner is the black word spoken than every door is shut upon her, skirts drawn aside, tables shifted, slander uttered in no mere whisper. They recalled her coming--the strong man of the Fête de Neuilly, the clown, the tights, the van, the vagrant’s life. A little more of it and they would have pushed her headlong over to the great congregation of grisettes, maquereaux and night-hawks who throng the cabarets of the Butte. In short, my dear Paddy, they would have made a criminal and something worse of her--and you know what that would mean among the savages of Montmartre. Let me tell you next how I have come to save her from such a fate--if it be but for the moment--for, as Richter has told us, woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice with which we are acquainted.

I have saved her. She is in this very room while I am writing this letter; but, Paddy, if she were to walk a hundred yards down the alley which has the honour to house me I would not answer for her life.

To make this clear, let me return to the Sunday after “the crime” and to my own recreation upon that innocent day. A morning with Sabine Monterey and old Villefort upon the Seine at Poissy; lunch in a frock coat and glory with Lea d’Alençon at her apartment in the Avenue de Malakoff; then to Longchamp; a little dinner at Armenonville, and afterwards the long journey home, the steep climb to the Butte and the card-box house which permits me to look down upon the sails of La Galette.

Why I went so far that Sunday night I cannot tell you. There is still my apartment in the Hôtel St. Paul open to me when I would return to civilisation. But I think the amorous Lea had put thoughts of Mimi into my head, and, wondering if all were well with her, I returned to the Maison du bon Tabac and to my bed. Ten minutes after I had entered the house, came Chocolat, the messenger from the old Café of the Assassins, knocking as the devil knocked on old Luther’s door at Weimar. Then I knew that all was not well with Mimi, and down I went, the black man upon my heels, vainly endeavouring in three languages to tell me what had happened.

What a jargon it was, what a medley of all the elusive argot of the cabarets! This much alone was clear--that Mimi La Godiche had got somehow into the Café of the Assassins (they call it the Lapin Agil to-day), and that if I did not get her out she certainly would be murdered.

True, there was a _cipi_, or municipal guard, to protect her from the immediate fury of her friends; but these would force her presently to the pavement, and then God help her! So much Chocolat, the messenger, declared as we hurried down the alley, passed Cerberus at the gate thereof, and plunged into the darkness of the labyrinth below. I could save Mimi La Godiche--the _patron_ wished it; madame, his wife, was of like opinion. The danger lay in the alleys--not in any house, and certainly not at the famous cabaret of the Agile Wolf. Upon this point Chocolat was emphatic. They could look after their own--the streets were another affair.

Well, I reached the place at last, after as unpleasant a descent as ever led to Avernus, and entered the café just upon the stroke of midnight.

You know the place; the dirty courtyard before it; the rude benches in the shed that serves for a concert-room; the horrid unshaven faces of men who wear the mask of death; the savage ferocity in the women’s eyes. Of course, there are lights enough; lights and a rousing piano, and a chansonnier who lisps things we should be very sorry to repeat to-morrow. The fellow was singing nothing more virile than “Monsieur le Curé” when I came in, and, to be candid, not a soul there paid me a sou’s worth of attention. Remember that I was unknown in these places except as a poor devil of a sculptor trying to singe his wings in the candle of ambition. This reputation has been my protection hitherto, alike at the Maison du bon Tabac and in the alleys of the Butte.

Here at the Lapin Agil I must lose it, finally and irreparably, as all the omens seem to say--and losing it, have no longer a home upon the Butte of Montmartre.

De Courcy was singing when I entered the cabaret, and a bald-headed old man with a chalk-faced child, who should have been his daughter, appeared the only claque which the performer commanded. Little Mimi La Godiche I spied out at once, sitting at a table with a huge ruffian they call the Mount upon the one side and Desmond Barrymore upon the other. I was glad to see Desmond there, and pushed my way over to him. Across the room there stood a company of as savage an appearance as any defender of the Café des Assassins might desire--squat, burly, black-eyed brigands, fearful women, girls who saw the sun rise every day but rarely had seen it set. These were watching Mimi and the Mount as though the whole drama moved about them. Desmond Barrymore, however, did not appear to know what it was all about, and told me so immediately.

“The man says he’s robbed,” he explained--pointing to the Mount with the stump of a tattered cigarette. “I guess he’s dreaming. Come right in, Henry, and help me to put the fear of God into him.”

He made way for me upon the bench, and I sat down and began to ask Mimi about it. Her cheeks have not much colour in a common way, but they were now a beautiful crimson and there was light enough in her eyes to set the café on fire.

“What’s up, Mimi?” I asked her. “Why did you send Chocolat barking to my door?”

She kicked a pair of fat legs against the bench, and, leaning back, she laughed in the ruffian’s face as he bent down to catch her answer.

“_Ah, mes enfants_,” she cried, imitating the inimitable Georges Tiercy in his famous song. “_Ah, mes enfants--ce cochon de Jean-le-Mont a une écrevisse dans le vol-au-vent_”--and by that she meant (for the line is already grown grey) that the fellow who pestered her had a bee in his bonnet.

“How did you come here?” I asked her.

“In the automobile of Monsieur le Comte de Pigalle.”

They laughed at this, for I need not tell you, Paddy, that the Rue Pigalle does not boast its Count, and that an automobile which could climb the Butte might set out to-morrow to vanquish Mont Blanc.

“No, nonsense. Mimi… there has been a row. What is it all about?”

Barrymore intervened, jerking a fine fat thumb towards the ruffian.

“The fellow says she robbed him.”

“Of what, Barrymore?”

“Of a cigarette-case set in diamonds.”

Again the café roared with laughter. A cigarette-case set with diamonds at the Lapin Agil! Oh, famous treasure! I, of course, knew the truth in an instant. Mimi La Godiche had stolen my property from the man who stole it from me.

“What do you say to that, Mimi?”

She looked at me as a child in wonder--never was there a cleverer little actress or one with a cooler head.

“Do not be foolish, Monsieur Henry (_ne faites pas des bêtises_), I only smoke a pipe.”

“And you, my friend?”--this to the ruffian they call the Mount.

But he flinched at the question, and drained a glass of filthy liquor before he answered it.

“She stole the box. Do I steal with my own hands? No, monsieur, but the she-cats of Paris could rob the Bourse. I was walking to my seat when she pushed against me. Ask the ‘cipi’ if it is not true? I will have her searched, I tell you… she shall give me back my property!”

“Your property, good man! Do you carry cigarette boxes set in diamonds?”

“Monsieur, I am an honest man--this property was lost in Paris, and I would restore it to its rightful owner.”

“Then you will restore it to me immediately, for it is mine and was lost at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball, as you very well know.”

Well, Paddy, this took him by the heels, so to speak, and laid him upon his back. I had been careful not to advertise the case, fearing a reputation for riches among the apaches of the Butte; but the cat was out of the bag this time and every ear intent. As for the ruffian, he was floored for the moment; but he recovered a second wind of argument presently, and, being both drunk and querulous, was by no means done with.

“It is an affair for the police,” he exclaimed, lurching as he sat, and bringing his fist down with a smashing blow upon the table. “Ask the ‘cipi’--she must go with me to the police-station and take the affair there. I am an honest man and I will not be robbed. You say that this is your case, monsieur--well, prove so much to the police and I shall have no more to say. But you shall prove it--I will make you, I, Jean-le-Mont--hear that, monsieur--I will make you prove it!”

He stretched an arm across the table and pulled the lappet of my coat with clumsy vigour. I saw that an uproar was at hand, but determined to keep my temper as long as possible. Big as Desmond Barrymore and I are, we were no match for the black company upon the opposite side of the room--and there was a magazine which any foolish word might fire in an instant. So it was necessary to temporise and, above all things, to keep the mob quiet; in which endeavour I called for a bottle of wine and some cigars, and affected to make light of the fellow’s impudence.

“You are talking nonsense,” I said. “My case had my name inside it--we can easily prove that. Drink a glass of wine with me and then come to the station. What’s the hurry about? We sha’n’t run away, and I don’t suppose you have any engagement. Now, isn’t that a fair offer, monsieur?”

He muttered something, I know not what, and sank back to glower at the waiter Juno, who snapped the cork from a bottle and set it before me. Mimi, I observed, was still smiling; Desmond Barrymore playing with his cigarette as a man over-anxious, but not afraid. As for the _canaille_ opposite, I perceived its hesitation, and did not fail to take its meaning. There could be no brawl permitted in the cabaret, but there might very well be a pretty affair outside. In a word, they waited for us to go, each believing that he or she would shortly become the possessor of a gold cigarette-case set with diamonds. This was the state of the game when the man they call Jean-le-Mont spoiled everything by a premature declaration of hostilities, both unexpected and maladroit. For what should he do but lurch to his feet, catch Mimi by both her slim arms, and begin to hug her like a bear; while he did not cease to shower upon her that unnameable abuse in common use upon the Butte.

Now, this was very unexpected, Paddy, and left the “backs” rather nonplussed. A table stood between the pair--bottle and glasses had already gone crash to the floor. Had I struck at the man immediately, I might have hit Mimi, and done her a mischief; it was impossible to get at the fellow’s legs or to secure so firm a grip upon his arms as would open them and release his prey. Luckily, Desmond is a man of some wit, and did not fail me. I saw him watching the pair with a droll expression upon his face; then he calmly put his cigarette under the giant’s nose, and held it there until the fellow turned upon him savagely and struck a Triton’s blow. Before he could repeat it I had laid him on the floor with a counter that Molt of Cambridge taught me; and you could count the minutes before he rose again.

Forgive me, Paddy, for thrusting upon you this plain tale of a tavern brawl. The papers have a “piece” about it, and that is my excuse. It will also permit you to understand the new _rôle_ in which I find myself--that of brother, uncle, guardian, foster-father, tutor, friend to a tousled-haired nymph of the slums, for whom now I am solely responsible.

Admittedly, there has been some personal humiliation before this was arrived at. Your ready mind will depict the scene in the cabaret after that Jean-le-Mont lay upon the floor, and the “_cipi_” drew his sword and bawled murder. Upon my life, I thought the three of us were done for. The cries, the fierce oaths, the looks, the words of them! And then upon it all, the enraged _patron_ forcing us all to the street, swearing that he would have no murder in his house; which, my dear Paddy, remembering that it used to be the Café of the Assassins, you must admit to be both illogical and disloyal.

He said that we should go, and go it seemed we must. The place was in an uproar now; the steep street very soon became a pandemonium. I knew that the apaches were out, and I would tell you what I would tell no other man alive, that I had the fear of God in me down to my very toes.

And what of this waif and stray, Mimi La Godiche, who had my cigarette-case upon her, and must, but for our protection, jostle with the ravening wolves at the door? I had never understood the child, and I understood her less in that moment--for there she was smiling still, or, stooping, as her trick was, to smooth her short dress over her knees; now bursting into laughter; now saying, “_Ah, mes enfants_,” in that tone inimitable of the cabaret. And the ruffian at her feet had drawn a knife long enough to cut up the beef at Smithfield. Oh, my dear Paddy, what a harvest of the green years as Jehan Rictus would paint them for us in those immortal verses which my countrymen so rarely understand!

This babel of sounds endured five full and dreadful minutes, I suppose, during which time the ladies of the company lost no time in emptying the glasses of the gentlemen, and the gentlemen in picking the pockets of the ladies. When it became clear that we must go or face an enraged _patron_ and three of the prettiest bullies in Montmartre, I whispered a word to Desmond to stand all close until we reached the street, and then to go as calmly and with as little concern as might be toward my box of a house upon the height.

Granted that this was the uninventive hope of a man who certainly believed he would find a knife in him shortly; but, Paddy, what better plan could you have named, or by what road did wisdom lie?

We had to go out into that darkness of the gutter, where the wolves were waiting, and to go upon the instant. No excuse, no entreaty seemed to modify the temper of the ruffian, who feared the police, and would have none of us. For my part, I preferred the unknown dangers of the pavement to the clubs of Chocolat and the _patron_; and, although a scene in Thiers recurred to me, when the prisoners from the Abbey were driven forth to slaughter in those fateful September massacres, I chose to whistle one of Legay’s songs rather than to recite it. Then, putting my arm about Mistress Mimi’s waist, I dragged her from the place, and went pell-mell to the fray. Eheu, Paddy, what a moment to live! what a pretty episode in the life of a young gentleman come to Paris to study the sculptor’s art!

We were in the thick of it, then, and no mistake at all about the matter. Fifty at least of the choicest blackguards of the Butte waited in the alley and swarmed about us instantly. I felt their hands all over me like mice upon a sack of corn. One rogue thrust his great fingers into my waistcoat pocket, and had the satisfaction of taking therefrom an American time-piece of the value of three shillings and sixpence; another robbed me of a wooden pencil in a tin case; a third of a couple of five-franc pieces and some small change. This plunder was far from being what they wanted. Just as the vultures loom mysteriously upon the horizon when a man sits down to die by the wayside, so did they appear at this talk of gold and diamonds.

Had there been but two or three there gathered together, I don’t doubt they would have dealt with us as men deal with chickens at Easter; but their very numbers defeated a set purpose, and the lights of the cabaret forbade a murder. For a little while we swayed about as a ship caught in a vortex; the lamps shone down upon faces besotten with drink or fired by greed; I could see the room behind us, the figure of the _patron_, who still gesticulated, the gaunt form of Jean-le-Mont, now risen to his feet; and it seemed to me to take the place of a pleasant harbour one had quitted in despair. Then I think a ruffian tried to pull me down from behind; but the press was too close, and I caught his hand in mine and went near to breaking his wrist. This was a mistake, for he also possessed a knife, and drew it, and it needed an iron hand upon his throat to silence him.

I am going deeper than I meant into these police-court news, Paddy, chiefly that you may understand my present difficulty with Mimi La Godiche. Let me tell you that when the fun really began, when fists were busy and hats were flying down the Butte, when the women shrieked and fled and the men called upon their fellows to make an end of us, I discovered that she had friends, even among such as these, that she could call them by their gutter-names and that they would answer her. It may be that many of them hung back just because it was Mimi of the booths and the _fêtes foraines_, and by no chance could she be credited with the possession of sixpence; but, the reflection apart, my spirits sank when I heard them recognise her, and a sense of degradation, impossible to define, afflicted me anew.

What a position for Henry Gastonard to be in--self-sought, inevitable, the price of this gipsy’s game upon the Butte; the consequence of a chosen masquerade and a self-imposed war upon civilisation!

Were there not a thousand devils of my Saxon self-respect crying at my elbow to have done with it--to pitch them a handful of money--to say to them, “There is your sister in the arts; take her by the hand and lead her to her home?” A flash of thought it may have been, while I dealt with the gentlemen of the pavement and calculated the chances with a greater precision; but there it was, and while it ran strong in my head, the girl herself lay almost in my very arms, smiling still, a very _gamin_ enjoying a brawl as a common incident in her daily life. Do you wonder, Paddy, that I clung to my wreckage and refused to part with it to any other robber upon the shore? By heaven and earth, I swear she is the best plucked ’un that ever wore a red silk stocking or showed it on a booth to a gaping multitude. And that you shall come to believe for yourself presently--when I take you fifty paces further from the cabaret and show you in a line just why we were not murdered.

Do you remember the Rue St. Vincent, that narrow lane by the Assassins, with the great black buttresses and the dingy oil-lamp we used to deride together? Well, it was just by there that we seemed in for the worst; just by the very corner that you would not have paid the half of a brass farthing for our chances.

I had as good as given it up, and fallen to wondering what it feels like to have six inches of steel in your vitals while twenty hands are picking your pockets and twenty more are rifling your shoes. That this was premature, the unexpected but quite gentlemanly appearance of some fifteen agile _sergents de ville_ immediately assured me. They had been fetched, it seemed, by the “cipi,” or municipal guard, at the cabaret, who, while he would not have lifted a finger to save Mimi La Godiche, was by no means willing that an Englishman should be papered to-morrow, or found drowned upon the following morning. Thus the company, armed to its very teeth, and thus the rats scuttling to their holes, the women left to slither down the steep, the men crying that Mimi La Godiche was _une guêpe_, and that they would settle with her upon another occasion.

I thanked the guard, Paddy; thanked Desmond Barrymore for his kindness to the girl; and bidding him “good night” (it should have been good morning), I climbed the mountain to that verdant alley wherein my home lies, and took Mimi to the parlour with me. Her first act was to return me my diamonds. I need not particularise as to where she had hidden them, or what was her inspiration. She is here as I write this, like a dog upon my carpet. She has been for twenty hours almost in the same position--but what am I going to do with her, what provision make for her, or how am I going to smuggle her in safety from this mount of thieves, I know, my dear Paddy, no more than your estimable self.

So let me have your consolations. All places are filled with fools, says Cicero--but there are but two at the Maison du bon Tabac, and one is Mimi La Godiche and the other--

Yours eternally,
Henry Gastonard.