"You must go on now, though," I said, maliciously. "Oh, yes--of course--go on," he answered; "but, monsieur----" he hesitated. "What is it, my dear friend?" I said. "I thought to ask a favor of you," he replied. "Will you accompany me to this house, monsieur? I feel I ask much--but will you?" "Much, my very dear sir!" I exclaimed, in the fullness of my heart--"not at all too much. I shall be happy to be of any use to you, and will sit and smoke those cigars of yours, and let the ghosts go to old ----." I stopped suddenly. "And what," thought I, "will Grace say to _that_?" A sort of dampness rushed out upon my skin; I had forgotten her. My sentence remained unfinished, and I looked eagerly about me, as if to question the adjoining shrubs as to what on earth I was to do. My dear Grace was the light of my eyes, and the joy of my heart, I'm sure; the best wife, the most amiable of the sex, but yet she had a kind of will of her own, which was apt to get grafted, as it were, upon mine. She never opposed me positively in any thing, but somehow, if she did not like it, it was rarely done. I had just promised what I might not be able to perform; and yet I did not like to confess to this foreigner that my wife led me. "A plague upon his Cubas and him too," I thought. Still, what was to be done? "If you cannot sleep there to-night," he said, noticing my uneasiness, "I will claim the night's grace----" "Grace!" I exclaimed; my wife before me in the word. "Yes, she said to-night or to-morrow." "Oh, to-night?--impossible!" I cried. "I have a very--an engagement to-night. I can not possibly make it to-night. Besides," I exclaimed, grasping at an idea like a drowner at a rope, or any thing saving, "mademoiselle may not give leave to share your danger with any one." "I asked her," he said--I had noticed them exchange whispers--"and she will----" "Bother!" I muttered; but instantly continued, with a smile, "if it is to be so I will be at your service to-morrow. Meanwhile, let me slip away now--that engagement, you know." We were at the foot of the Côte de Grace by this time. He brought the party to a stand-still, and, after some difficulty, I was allowed to desert, Le Brun asking me to join him next day to dinner, to which I agreed. After I left the joyous set I walked away fiercely, like a man with a purpose, till they were out of sight; but, as I neared that sanctuary of the heart where the tea would be waiting for me, the fierceness of my pace abated, and, with hands in pockets and head depressed, I slackened my speed more and more, till at last, when I reached my garden-gate, I came to a stand-still. Unhappily I am tall, and my children are all wonderfully quick. I had not stood at the gate three seconds before I was surrounded by my urchins, whooping, and getting among my legs, and hanging to my tails, and playing the wildest pranks off on me.