"_Ah! mais non_," she panted. "I may be strong like a man, but _grâce à Dieu_, I don't resemble one. Look." And she sat bolt upright, her hands at her waist developing her bust to its full extent. She was not _jolie, jolie_, she explained, but she was as solidly built as another; I was to examine myself and see how like I was to the flattest of boards. Routed I chewed blades of grass in silence until she spoke again. "Tell me of the _patron_." "The _patron_?" I asked, puzzled. "Yes--Monsieur--your master." "You must call him _maître_," said I, "not _patron_." For the _patron_ was any peddling "boss," the leader of a troupe of performing dogs or the miserable landlord of a village inn, Paragot a _patron_! "I meant no harm. I have too much respect for him," said Blanquette, humbly. Again reinstated in my position of superiority I explained the Master to her feminine intelligence. "He has been to every place in the world and knows everything that is to be known, and speaks every language that is spoken under the sun, and has read every book that ever was written, and I have seen him break a violin over a man's head." "_Tiens!_" said Blanquette. "In the Forum at Rome last winter he had an argument with the most learned professor in Europe who is making the excavations, and proved him to be wrong." "_Tiens!_" repeated Blanquette, much impressed, though of Forum or excavations she had no more notion than Narcisse. "If he wanted to be a king tomorrow, he would only have to go up to a throne and sit upon it." "But no," said Blanquette. "To be a king one must be a king's son." "How do you know that he isn't?" I asked with a could-and if-I-would expression of mystery. "King's sons don't go about the high roads with little _gamins_ like you," replied the practical Blanquette. "How do you know that I am not a king's son too?" I asked, less with the idea of self-aggrandisement than that of vindication of Paragot. "Because you yourself said that your mother sold you as my mother sold me to Père Paragot." Whereupon it suddenly occurred to me that as far as retentiveness of memory was concerned, Blanquette was not such a fool as in my arrogance I had set her down to be. I was going to retort that his magnificence in purchasing me proved him a personage of high order, but as I quickly reflected that the same argument might apply to the rank of the contemned Père Paragot, I refrained. A silence ensuing, I uncomfortably resolved to study my master with a view to acquiring his skill in repartee. "But what does he do, the Master?" enquired Blanquette. "Do? What do you mean?" "How does he earn his living?" "That shows you know nothing about him," I cried triumphantly. "King's sons do not earn their living. They have got it already. Haven't you ever read that in books?" "I can read and write, but I don't read books," sighed Blanquette. "I am not clever. You will have to teach me."