My meal over, I went to Paragot's room. I found him in bed, not as usual pipe in mouth and a tattered volume in his hand, but lying on his back, his arms crossed beneath his head, staring into the white curtains of which Blanquette was so proud. "My son," said he, after he had enquired after my welfare and my lunch and advised me as to cooling medicaments wherewith to mitigate a certain pimplous condition of cheek, "My son, I want you to make me a promise. Swear that if a hitch occurs in your scheme of the cosmos, you will not break up your furniture with a crusader's mace. Such a proceeding has infinite consequences of effraction. It disrupts your existence and ends with the irreparable smash of your porcelain pipe." Whereupon he asked me for a cigarette and began to smoke reflectively. "One ought to order one's scheme so that no hitch can occur," said I. "As far as I can gather from the theologians that is beyond the power even of the Almighty," said Paragot. Blanquette appeared with the morning absinthe. "The hitch, my son, in my case was beyond mortal control," he said looking up at the bed-curtains. "You may think that I caused it in the first place. You heard me last night accused of cruelty. You, discreet little image that you are, know more about things than I thought. And yet you must wonder, now that you are nearly a man, what can be, what can have been between this disreputable hairy scallywag who is eating the bread of idleness and," with a sip of his absinthe, "drinking the waters of destruction, and that fair creature of dainty life. Don't judge anyone, my little Asticot '_Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quædam esse dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et assentiendi nota._' That is Cicero, an author to whom I regret I have not been able to introduce you, and it means that the false is so mingled with the true and looks so like it, that there is no sure mark whereby we may distinguish one from the other. It is a damned fool of a world." In this chastened mood I left him. I learned later in the day that the appearance of the Comtesse in the Café Delphine and the exodus of Paragot had caused no small sensation. Cazalet had peeped through the glass door. "_Cré nom de nom_, she is driving him off in her own carriage!" He returned to the table and drank a glass of anisette to steady his nerves. Who was the lady? Evidently Paragot was leading a double life. Madame Boin nodded her head mysteriously as though possessed of secrets she would not divulge. They spent the evening in profitless conjecture. The fact remained that Paragot, the hairy disreputable scallywag, had relations with a high born and beautiful woman. It was stupefying. _C'était abracadabrant!_ That was the final word. When the Quartier Latin calls a thing _abracadabrant_ there is no more to be said.