Temperament is merely a permanent mood. François was like the month of June in his dear Paris. There might be storms and changes, but his mental weather had the pleasant insurance of what was in the order of despotic nature. And yet to be owner of the continual sunshine of cheerfulness has its drawbacks. It deprives a man of some of the wholesome lures of life. It dulls the spurs which goad us to resolve. It may make calamity too easy of endurance. To be too consistently cheerful may be in itself a misfortune. It had for this vagrant all its values and some of its defects. His simple, gay existence, and his flow of effervescent merriment, kept him happy and thoughtless. Most persons of this rare type like company; but François was an exception. He was better pleased to be alone with his dog, and usually desired no other society. As the poodle could not talk, his master was given to making answer for him, and finding no one to his taste among the Crab’s villainous lodgers, kept to himself, and was satisfied. Nor did he ever appear to have imagined what the larger world he knew not held of such human society as would have comforted that sense of void in his heart which he acknowledged at times, but had no way to fill. When fortune played him some sorry trick, he laughed, and unconsciously quoted La Rochefoucauld. "Toto, ah, my Toto, one can never be as cunning as everybody." This was apropos of an incident which greatly amused him. He was in his favorite resort, the Palais Royal, one June morning, and was at this time somewhat short of cash. The Crab had preached him a sharp sermon on his lack of industry, and he had liked neither the sermon nor the preacher. At this moment a young fellow in fine clothes came by. François, producing, as usual, a gaudy snuff-box worth some ten francs, politely asked of monsieur had he lost this box. Monsieur took it in his hand. Yes, yes; he had just missed it, the gift of his god-father, and was much obliged. He let it fall into his pocket, and walked away. François looked after him. "Toto, _nous sommes volés_—we are sold!" Then the fun of it, as usual, overcame him, and he wandered away to the garden of the Luxembourg, and at last threw himself on a bench, and laughed as a child laughs, being for moments quiet, and then given over to uncontrolled mirth. Having feasted with honest comfort on all the humorous aspects of the situation, his hand chanced to fall on a little book left by some one on the seat. He had long ceased to read, for no books fell in his way, nor could he often have afforded to buy them even had he had a keen appetite for their contents. [Illustration: FRANÇOIS AND TOTO IN THE LUXEMBOURG.]