M. Auguste's manners to us were irreproachable. We could only admire the consideration he showed in so persistently effacing himself. J. never would have seen him, if on feast days--Christmas, New Year's, the 14th of July--M. Auguste had not, with great ceremony, entered the dining-room at the hour of morning coffee to shake hands and wish J. the compliments of the season. With me his relations grew less formal, for he was not slow to discover that we had one pleasant weakness in common. Though the modest proportions of that brown-paper parcel might not suggest it, M. Auguste knew and liked what was good to eat; so did I. Almost before I realized it, he had fallen into the habit of preparing some special dish for me, or of making my coffee, when I chanced to be alone for lunch or for dinner. I can still see the gleam in his eyes as he brought me in my cup, and assured me that he, not Louise, was the artist, and that it was something of extra--but of extra!--as it always was. Nor was it long before he was installed _chef_ in our kitchen on the occasion of any little breakfast or dinner we might be giving. The first time I caught him in shirt-sleeves, with Louise's apron flapping about his legs and the bib drawn over his waistcoat, he was inclined to be apologetic. But he soon gave up apology. It was evident there were few things he enjoyed more than cooking a good dinner,--unless it was eating it,--and his apron was put on early in the day. In the end, I never asked any one to breakfast or dinner without consulting him, and his _menus_ strengthened the friendliness of our relations. After a while he ran my errands and helped Louise to market. I found that he spoke and wrote very good English, and was a man of some education. I have preserved his daily accounts, written in an unusually neat handwriting, always beginning "Mussy: 1 penny"; and this reminds me that not least in his favour was his success in ingratiating himself with William Penn,--or "Mussy" in Louise's one heroic attempt to cope with the English. M. Auguste, moreover, was quiet and reserved to a degree that would not have discredited the traditional Englishman. Only now and then did the _Midi_ show itself in him: in the gleam of his eye over his gastronomic masterpieces; in his pose as horse-dealer and the scale on which the business he never did was schemed,--_Mademoiselle_, the French dressmaker from Versailles, who counted in tens and thought herself rich, was dazzled by the way M. Auguste reckoned by thousands; and once, luckily only once, in a frenzied outbreak of passion.