"Ah!" said Paragot, excited as usual by his success, "_ou sont les neiges d'antan_? Where is the good Père Cordier of the Café Cordier? He would play billiards with his nose, and a little pug nose at that, my children. When it grew greasy he would chalk it deliberately. Once he made a break of two hundred and forty-five. A champion! The Café Cordier itself? Swept long ago into the limbo of dear immemorable dissolute things. Then there was the Café du Bas-Rhin on the Boul' Mich' where Marie la Démocrate drank fifty-five bocks in an evening against Hélène la Sévère who drank fifty-three. Where are such women now, O generation of slow worms? Where is----" He stopped. His jaw dropped. "My God!" he exclaimed in English, rising from his chair. We followed his gaze. Astounded, I too sprang up. It was the Comtesse de Verneuil standing in the doorway and looking in her frightened way into the café: Joanna in dark fitting toque and loose jacket beneath which one saw a gleaming high evening dress. I noted swiftly that she had violets in her toque. Her beauty, her rare daintiness compelled a stupefied silence. I sped towards the door and went with her into the street. A closed carriage stood by the kerb. She took me by the front of my loose jacket and twisted it nervously. "Get him out, Mr. Asticot. Tell him I must see him." "But how did you come here?" I asked. "I went first to the Rue des Saladiers. The servant told me I should find him at the Café Delphine." I left her outside, and re-entering, met him in the middle of the Café, grasping his green hat in one hand and the pipe with the porcelain bowl in the other. All eyes were turned anxiously towards us. "She has come for you, Master," I whispered. "She needs you. Come." "What does she want with me? It was all over and done with thirteen years ago." His voice shook. "She is waiting," said I. I drew him to the door and he obeyed me with strange docility. He drew a deep breath as soon as we emerged on to the wind-swept pavement. "Gaston." "Yes," said he. They remained looking at each other for several seconds, agitated, neither able to speak. "You were very cruel to me long ago," she said at last. My Master remained silent; the wooden stem of the pipe snapped between his fingers and the porcelain bowl fell with a crash to the pavement. "Very cruel, Gaston. But you can make a little reparation now, if you like." "I repair my cruelty to you?" He laughed as men laugh in great pain. "Very well. It will be a fitting end to a topsy-turvy farce. What can I do for Madame la Comtesse?" "My husband is ill. Come to him. My carriage is here. Oh, put on your hat and don't stand there French fashion, bareheaded. We are English." "We are what you will," said my Master putting on his hat. "At present however I am mystified by your lighting on me in the dustbin of Paris. You must have done much sifting." "I will tell you as we drive," she said.