He did not know. He would pack his bundle and flee like Christian from the accursed city. Like Christian he would go on a Pilgrim's Progress. He would seek sweet pure things. He would go forth and work in the fields. The old life had come to an end. The sow had been mistaken. It could not return to its wallowing in the mire. Wallowing was disgustful. Was ever man in such a position? The vagabond life had made the conventions of civilisation impossible. The contact with convention and clean English ways had killed his zest for the old order of which only the mud remained. There was nothing for it but to leave Paris. He poured out his heart to me in a torrent of excited words, here and there none too coherent. He must work. He had lost the great art by which he was to cover Europe with palaces. That was no longer. "My God!" said he stopping short. "The true knowledge of it has only come to me lately. I was living in a Fool's Paradise. I could never have designed a building. I should have lived on her bounty. Thank God I was saved the shame of it." He went on. Again he repeated his intention of leaving Paris. I must look after Blanquette for the present. He must go and dree his weird alone. "And yet, my little Asticot, it is the dreadful loneliness that frightens me. Once I had a dream. It sufficed me. But now my soul is empty. A man needs a woman in his life, even a Dream Woman. But for me, _ni-ni, c'est fini_. There is not a woman in the wide world who would look at me now." "Master," said I, "if you are going to settle down in the country, why don't you marry Blanquette?" "Marry Blanquette! Marry----" He regarded me in simple, undisguised amazement which took his breath away. He passed his hand through his hair and sat on the nearest seat. "_Nom de Dieu!_" said he, "I never thought of it!" Then he leaped up and caught me in the old way by the shoulders, and cried in French, as he did in moments of great excitement: "But it's colossal, that idea! It is the solution of everything. And I never thought of it though it has been staring me in the face. Why I love her, our little Blanquette. I have loved her all the time without knowing it as the good Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose. _Sacré nom d'un petit bonhomme!_ Why didn't you tell me before, confounded little animal that you are?" He swung me with a laugh, to the other side of the room, and waved his arms grotesquely, as he continued his dithyrambic eulogy of the colossal idea. I have never seen two minutes produce a greater change in a human countenance. Ten years fell from it. He looked even younger than when he had broken his fiddle over Mr. Pogson's head and received the inspiration of our vagabondage. His blue eyes cleared, and in them shone the miraculous light of laughter.