“My daily bulletin from my pupil and assistant, Quast, contains excellent reports. _Prosit_, Signore.” It was only when I found myself at the table with the dwarf and his broken-nosed friend that I collected my wits sufficiently to realise the probable reason of his presence in Marseilles. The grotesque little creature had actually kept his ridiculous word. He, too, had come south in search of the lost Captain Vauvenarde. We were companions in the Fool Adventure. There was something mediaeval in the combination; something legendary. Put back the clock a few centuries and there we were, the Knight and the Dwarf, riding together on our quest, while the Lady for whose sake we were making idiots of ourselves was twiddling her fair thumbs in her tower far beyond the seas. Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos broke upon this pleasing fancy by remarking again that Monsieur Saupiquet was a friend of Madame Brandt. “He was with her at the time of her great bereavement.” “Bereavement?” I asked forgetfully. “Her horse Sultan.” He whispered the words with solemn reverence. I must confess to being tired of the horse Sultan and disinclined to treat his loss seriously. “Monsieur Saupiquet,” said I, “doubtless offered her every consolation.” “He used to travel with her and look after Sultan's well-being. He was her----” “Her Master of the Horse,” I suggested. “Precisely. You have the power of using the right word, Monsieur de Gex. It is a great gift. My good friend Saupiquet is attached to a circus at present stationed in Toulon. He came over, at my request, to see me--on affairs of the deepest importance”--he waved the bundle of papers--“the very deepest importance. _Nicht wahr_, Saupiquet?” “_Bien sur_,” murmured Saupiquet, who evidently did not count loquacity among his vices. I wondered whether these important affairs concerned the whereabouts of Captain Vauvenarde; but the dwarf's air of mystery forbade my asking for his confidence. Besides, what should a groom in a circus know of retired Captains of Chasseurs? I said: “You're a very busy man, Monsieur le Professeur.” He tapped his domelike forehead. “I am never idle. I carry on here gigantic combinations. I should have been a lawyer. I can spread nets that no one sees, and then--pst! I draw the rope and the victim is in the toils of Anastasius Papadopoulos. _Hast du nicht das bemerkt_, Saupiquet?” “_Bien sur_,” said Saupiquet again. He seemed perfectly conversant with the dwarf's polyglot jargon. “To the temperament of the artist,” continued the modest Papadopoulos, “I join the intellect of the man of affairs and the heart of a young poet. I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years of age.” He jumped from his chair and struck an attitude of the Apollo Belvedere. “I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered person like myself,” said I.