"My children," said Paragot, on our return journey in the close, ill-lighted, wooden-seated third-class compartment, "we have had a glorious day. One of those sun-kissed, snow-capped peaks that rise here and there in the monotonous range of life. It fills the soul with poetry and makes one talk in metaphor. In such moments as these we are all metaphors, my son. We are illuminated expressions of the divine standing for the commonplace things of yesterday and tomorrow. We have accomplished what millions and millions are striving and struggling and failing to do at this very hour. We have achieved _success_! We have left on human souls the impress of our mastery! We are also all of us dog-tired and, I perceive, disinclined to listen to transcendental conversation." "I'm not tired, master," I declared as stoutly as the effort of keeping open two leaden eyelids would allow. "And you?" he asked turning to Blanquette by his side--I occupied the opposite corner. She confessed. A very little. But she had listened to all Monsieur had said, and if he continued to talk she would not think of going to sleep. Whereupon she closed her eyes, and when I opened mine I saw that her head had slipped along the smooth wooden back of the carriage and rested on Paragot's shoulder. Through sheer kindliness and pity he had put his arm around her so as to settle her comfortably as she slept. I envied her. When she awoke at the first stoppage of the train, she started away from him with a little gasp. "O Monsieur! I did not know. You should have told me." "I am only Père Paragot," said he. "You must often have had your head against this mountebank jacket of mine." She misunderstood him. Her eyes flashed. "It is the first time in my life--I swear it." She held up her two forefingers crossed and kissed them. "Père Paragot! _ah non!_ neither he nor another. I am an honest girl, though you may not think so." "My good Blanquette," said he kindly, taking her scarred coarse hand in his, "you are as honest a girl as ever breathed, and if Père Paragot didn't let you put your sleepy little head on his shoulder he must have been a stonier hearted old curmudgeon than you have given one to believe." So he soothed her and explained, while our two fellow passengers, a wizened old peasant and his wife, regarded them stolidly. "_Mon Dieu_, it is hot," said Blanquette. "Don't you think so, Asticot? I wish I had a fan." "I will make you one out of the paper the fowl is wrapped in," said Paragot. Not half a goose, but a cold fowl minus half a wing had been our supplementary guerdon. Decently enveloped in a sheet of newspaper it lay on her lap. When he had divested it of its covering, which he proceeded to twist into a fan, it still lay on her lap, looking astonishingly naked. At the next station the old peasant and his wife got out and we had the compartment to ourselves. Blanquette produced from her pocket a handkerchief knotted over an enormous lump.