[Illustration: ANSELM MATHIEU.] [Illustration: THÉODORE AUBANEL.] wash for me and come to fetch my things next week!” I upbraided him for an unscrupulous scoundrel, but he interrupted me again, saying I had not yet grasped the situation, and begging me to listen to the end of his tale. “While chatting with my little friend,” he continued, “I noticed she was rubbing away at a dainty chemise of finest linen, trimmed with lace. It excited my curiosity and admiration--I inquired to whom it belonged? ‘This chemise,’ the young girl answered, ‘belongs to one of the most beautiful ladies in Aix--a _baronne_ of some thirty summers, married, poor thing, to an old curmudgeon who is a judge of the Courts and jealous as a Turk.’ ‘She must be bored to death,’ I cried. ‘Ah yes,’ she replied, ‘she is bored to death, poor lady. There she sits on her balcony waiting, one would say, for some gallant gentleman who shall come to the rescue.’ I inquired her name, but here she demurred, saying she was but the laundress, and had no right to mix herself up in affairs that did not concern her. Not a word more could I get out of her; but,” added Mathieu hopefully, “when she comes for my washing next week, it is a pity if I don’t make her open her lips by bestowing two or three good kisses upon them.” “And when you know the name of the lady, what then?” I asked. “What then? Why, my dear fellow, I have bread in the cupboard for three years! While you other poor devils are grinding away at your law studies, I, like the troubadours of old Provence, shall at my leisure study beneath my lady’s balcony the gentle art of the laws of love.” And this was, in effect, precisely the task undertaken and accomplished by the Chevalier Mathieu during the three following years at Aix. * * * * * Ah, the good days we spent in excursions all over the country! Now a picnic by the Bridge of Arc, in a dell just off the dusty high road to Marseilles, or a party to Tholonet to sniff up the fine fumes of the wine of Langesse. Another time it was a students’ duel in the valley of Infernets, the pistols charged with pellets of mud; or again a merry company on the diligence to Toulon, through the lovely woods of Cuge and across the Gorge of Ollioules. The students of Aix had led much the same life since the good old days of the Popes of Avignon and the time of Queen Joan.