He was in France after all. Of that he now had no need to be assured by the child’s speech and attire. A glance around the infinite plain, dotted sparsely with red-roofed farm buildings and crossed by dead straight line of poplars marking roads like the one in front of him gave him full evidence. But how he had got to France, what he was doing there with a hawker’s caravan and a horse, he had no notion. And whereabouts in France was he? Certainly not near Le Touquet. ‘Where does this road lead to?’ he asked, waving a hand. ‘Why Chartres, Monsieur. Ten kilometres. Are you not going to the fair?’ She touched a chord that awakened echoes of dreamland. His sub-conscious self had already registered a long while ago, it seemed, the fact of the fair at Chartres. The child still held out her hand and murmured her claim for six sous. A plunge into his trousers pocket brought up a handful of French money. He gave her a franc and waved her away. She ran off somewhat scared by his madness, but exuberant at his generosity. ‘I give it up,’ said Cosmo Paradyne. But he didn’t. In the breast-pocket of his golfing jacket he found the travelling wallet which he had filled that Saturday night at Ealing. He examined its contents. One first-class ticket for London to Boulogne--that was obviously the one destined for Martha; his own he must have used; three ten-pound notes--he had put ten into the wallet; so he must have changed seventy pounds English money. A wad of French hundred-franc notes. Cards and prescriptions. The soiled Chemin de Fer card. Also a new document or two. One, a dirty piece of coarse paper which he unfolded, was a receipt in French, villainously written and spelled, for the purchase of the caravan, stock and horse. It was made out in his name, Monsieur Cosmo Paradyne. It was duly stamped, signed Galéo Gaspard, and dated the twelfth of June. He scratched a puzzled head. That was Tuesday in Whitsun week. The dates in his mind were clear. The Courts rose on the eighth. He had decided to start for Le Touquet on the fifth. The night when he went forth from his house, key in pocket, was that of Saturday the second of June. Ten days therefore had elapsed between his midnight walk and his purchase of this ridiculous outfit. Another document, stamped with the stamp of the Republic, was a hawker’s licence. He sighed and entered the caravan, hung, roof and sides, with pots and pans and gaudy scarves and encumbered with battered cases of cheap cutlery, and perceived at the end a cupboard, which, when opened, he found to be stored with food and cooking utensils. There was half a vast circular loaf; eggs, butter, coffee, a good twelve inches of mighty sausage. On the floor stood a tin ewer filled with water. He found also an elementary toilet equipment which, certainly, had never seen Ealing.