Now, it behoved me to proceed with caution, which I did; yet none so successfully but that I came plump out of the mouth of the green passage upon M. de Lâge himself, and saw and was seen by him in a single moment. Therefore I had nothing for it but to brazen out the situation. He showed no disturbance at my approach, nor, indeed, did he take any notice of me; but he crept hither and thither, with lack-lustre eyes, gathering nettles. I went up to him, suppressing my repugnance of the miserable creature. “Is mademoiselle returned?” I said outright. He stopped in his picking, and leered up at me vaguely. He seemed utterly broken and forlorn. “She will not return,” he said; and resumed his task. I stood some moments watching him. Suddenly he clasped his hands plaintively together and looked me again in the face. “Why did she go at all?” he said. “Can monsieur tell me, for I forget?” He put his fingers aimlessly, like an infant, to his head. “I had a pride in her. She was beautiful and self-willed. _Mon Dieu!_ but she would make me laugh or tremble, the rogue. Well, she is gone.” Could it be that his every memory of his villainy was lost with his cherished tankards? “What a love was mine,” he murmured. “I would have denied her nothing--in reason; and she has deserted me.” “Monsieur,” I said, “do you remember me?” “You, you!” he cried angrily--“what do I know or care about this Orson that springs upon me from the green? You need to be shaved and washed, monsieur.” “Undoubtedly; if monsieur would provide me with the means?” He gave me a quick inquisitive look. “You have a queer accent for a patriot. Well, well--it is no concern of mine.” Again he resumed his task, again to pause in it. “Do you seek a service? I hear it is the case with many.” “I seek food and a lodging for the night.” “Eh! but can you pay for them?” “In reason--certainly, in reason.” “So, then?--should Georgette bring a generous basketful--bah!” he cried suddenly, stamping irritably on the ground--“I offer you my poor hospitality, monsieur, and” (the leer came into his eyes again)--“should monsieur feel any scruple, a vail left on the mantelpiece for the servants will doubtless satisfy it.” But he had no servant left to him, it would seem. When, by-and-by, he ushered me, with apish ceremony, into his house, I found the place desolate and forlorn as we had left it. “I have reduced my following,” he said, “since my niece withdrew herself from my protection. What does a single bachelor want with an army of locusts to devour him?” He showed me into a little bare room on the second floor, with nothing worthy of remark in it but an ill-furnished bedstead, and a baneful picture on the wall that I learnt was a portrait of Carinne by herself. “It is a little of a travesty,” said De Lâge. “She looked in a mirror, and painted as she saw herself therein--crooked, like a stick dipt under water. But she was clever, for all she insisted that this was a faithful likeness.”