Of course it was the Senator who kept the masterpiece, the buccaneer in him prizing it all the more when he learned from a grateful Gigi the origin of the raw material. He tells me he doesn’t care a whoop whether the work elevates American art or not; it elevates him. Mariellen admits it’s better so, since the lad Mario is the gainer by the one hundred dollars with which the Senator had built up the price. To clinch the matter, she wanted, for Mario’s sake, to add her own check to her uncle’s, her very first glance at that boy’s amazing sculpture in various lowly substances having convinced her of the wisdom of such a step. But I prevailed upon her to wait a year, at least; and that part does not come into this tale, at all. “Ah, well, there are more ways than one to elevate art, or anything else. It’s up to Mario, now,” blithely remarked the young lady in blue. “C’EST UNE TAUPE” I feel sure that everybody, at least everybody who _is_ anybody, really knows, in the bottom of his heart, just what a _taupe_ is. But in case there should be any person with such weighty world affairs on his mind that he could not possibly move them around to discover hidden among them an insignificant matter like a _taupe_, I will say that a _taupe_ is a small furry thing that burrows in the ground. By no means an unfashionable creature, I assure you! Its color is always modish. Its skins, when collected by hundreds and thousands, go to make up what I am informed are “among the most authoritative fur garments of the coming season.” In short, a _taupe_ is a mole, all told. Also, I am reasonably certain that most of us, if we should stop to consider the subject, would understand perfectly the nature of a _limace_. A slimy, limy _limace_! Its very name tells its story. It is not exactly one of the “slithy toves” of the old song, but they may all have had similar ancestors. And if you have guessed that a _limace_ is a slug, poor thing,—a big slug, no more and no less,—you are entirely right. So there you have the two characters, the mole, the slug; the furry, fashionable _taupe_, the slippery yet sticky _limace_.