"But Master," I cried, "there is no necessity." "What do you mean?" "She is leaving Aix herself tomorrow." "She!" he shouted, quite sober for the moment. "Who the devil do you mean by 'she'?" I upbraided myself for a vain idiot. Here was I on the point of breaking my oath sworn on Joanna's hand. I felt ashamed and frightened. He grasped my shoulder roughly. "Who do you mean by 'she'? Tell me." "The Lady of the Lake, Master," said I. He looked at me for a moment keenly, then relaxed his grip and shrugged his shoulders with the ghost of a laugh. "If you see holes in ladders in this perspicacious fashion you'll have to forsake the paths of art for the higher walks of the Prefecture of Police." He puffed silently at his pipe for a few moments and then turning his head away asked me in a low voice: "How can you know that she is leaving tomorrow?" I lied for the first time to Paragot. "I overheard her say so while I was waiting with the tambourine." "Sure?" "Quite sure." This seemed to satisfy him, to my great relief. How my poor little oath would have fared under cross examination I don't know. At any rate honour was saved. Paragot laid aside his pipe and looked wistfully into the past over his wine bowl. "The Lady of the Lake," he murmured. "I have called her many things good and bad in my time, but never that. You are a genius, my little Asticot." He finished his wine slowly, holding the bowl in both hands. The moon smiled at us in a friendly way, sailing high over the mountains. There entered my head the novel reflection that he was smiling on all men alike, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust. He was smiling just the same on Joanna's beaky-nosed husband. Her husband! Something caught at my heart. Did Paragot know? I debated anxiously in my mind whether I should impart the disastrous information. If he knew that she was a married woman he would put foolish thoughts out of his head, for it was only in Merovingian and such like romantic epochs that men loved other men's wives. I touched him timidly on the arm. "Master,--I overheard something else." "Did you?" "She is married, and that is her husband." "Did he take off his hat?" "No, Master." "He is a scaly-headed vulture," said Paragot dreamily. "He only gave me five sous," said I, relieved and yet disappointed at finding that my disclosure produced no agitation. Paragot fumbled in his pocket. "We will not batten on his charity," said he, and he cast three or four coppers into the silent street. They crashed, rolled and fell over with little chinks. Narcisse who had hitherto been asleep trotted out and sniffed at them. Paragot laughed; then checked himself, and holding up a long-nailed forefinger looked at me with an air of awful solemnity. "Listen to the wisdom of Paragot. There is not a woman worth a clean man that does not marry a scaly-headed vulture."