He entered the room and accosted me with a sort of sly courtesy that greatly confounded me. Associations connected with my reappearance, perhaps, had kindled the slow fuse of his memory; but the flame would burn fitfully and in a wrong direction; and, indeed, I think the shock of his loss (of the tankards) had quite unhinged his mind. “Shall we fall to?” he said. “This is not Paris; yet our good country Grisels can canvass the favour of a hungry man.” He gave a ridiculous little laugh. “And what have we here, girl?” he said. “M’sieu’, it is a pasty of young partridges.” His palate was not dulled with his wits. It foretasted the delicacy and his eyes moistened. He lingered regretfully over the wedge he cut for me. “Be generous, monsieur,” he cried, with an enjoying chuckle, “and own that you have been served none better at Véry’s. Oh, but I know my Paris! I was there so late as September of last year, and again, on business connected with my estate, during the month of the king’s trial.” He blenched over some sudden half-memory; but the sight of Georgette carrying my platter to me restored him to the business of the table. “I know my Paris!” he cried again. “I have taken kidneys with champagne at La Rapée’s; sheep’s feet at la Buvette du Palais; oysters at Rocher de Cançale. Ho-ho! but does monsieur know the Rocher?” “_Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos!_” I said, quoting a well-known inscription over an eating-house. He gave a sharp little squeak. “Eh! but monsieur has the right etymology of the _restaurateur_; he is a man of taste and of delicacy. This poor burgundy” (he clawed up his glass)--“it might have been Clos Vougeot de Tourton if monsieur had not been so stringent in his sequestration.” He favoured me with a leer--very arch and very anxious. I could only stare. Evidently he took me, in his wandering mind, for some other than that I was. I was to be enlightened in a moment. It was when Georgette had left the room and we were alone. The falling sunlight came through a curtain of vine-leaves about the window, and reddened his old mad face. He bent forward, looking at me eagerly. “Hush, monsieur! The plate--the tankards--the christening-cups! You will let me have them back? My God! there was a cross, in niello, of the twelfth century. It will bring you nothing in the markets of the Vandals. Monsieur, monsieur! I accept your terms--hot terms, brave terms for a bold wooer. But you must not seek to carry her with a high hand. She knows herself, and her pride and her beauty. Hush! I can tell you where she lies hidden. She crouches under a rosebush in the garden, and as the petals fall, they have covered and concealed her.” Now I understood. He was again, in his lost soul, staking Carinne against his forfeited pots. He took me for Lacombe. I jumped to my feet. * * * * * * *