“Cruel!” I cried. “What should I mean but that I breathed into it all that I have of reverence for beauty? If the citoyenne----” There was a general cry--“A fine! a fine!” The hateful word was interdicted under a penalty. “I pay it!” I said, and stooped and kissed the fair cheek. Its owner flushed and looked a little vexed, for all the general merriment. “Monsieur cheapens his own commodities,” she said. “Ah, mademoiselle! I know the best investments for my heart. I am a very merchant of love. If you keep my embrace, I am well advertised. If you return it, I am well enriched.” The idea was enough. Gardel invented a new game from it on the spot. In a moment half the company was rustling and chattering and romping about the room. M. Damézague’s “_Que ferons-nous demain matin?_”--that should have been this vivacious Gardel’s epitaph. He could not be monotonous; he could not be unoriginal; he could not rest anywhere--not even in his grave. It was curious to see how he deluded la Marquise into the belief that she was his superior. Indeed, these prisons afforded strange illustration of what I may call the process of natural adjustments. Accidents of origin deprived of all significance, one could select without any difficulty the souls to whom a free Constitution would have ensured intellectual prominence. I take Gardel as an instance. Confined within arbitrary limits under the old _régime_, his personality here discovered itself masterful. His resourcefulness, his intelligence, overcrowed us all, irresistibly leaping to their right sphere of action. He had a little learning even; but that was no condition of his emancipation. Also, he was not wanting in that sort of courage with which one had not condescended hitherto to accredit lackeys. No doubt in those days one was rebuked by many discoveries. Yet another possession of his endeared him to all _misérables_ in this casual ward of the guillotine. He had a mellow baritone voice, and a _répertoire_ of playful and tender little folk-songs. Clélie (it was she I had kissed; I never knew her by any other name) would accompany him on the harp, till her head drooped and the _poudre maréchale_ from her hair would glitter red on the strings--not to speak of other gentle dew that was less artificial. Then she would look up, with a pitiful mouth of deprecation. “_La paix, pour Dieu, la paix!_” she would murmur. “My very harp weeps to hear thee.” The pathos of his songs was not in their application. Perhaps he was quit of worse grievances than those the Revolution presented to him. Perhaps he was happier proscribed than enslaved. At any rate, he never fitted music to modern circumstance. His subjects were sweet, archaic--the mythology of the woods and pastures. It was in their allusions to a withered spring-time that the sadness lay. For, believe me, we were all Punchinellos, grimacing lest the terror of tears should overwhelm us.