We see him one August morning, in the plentitude of his success, lounging in a wicker chair on the shady lawn of the Hôtel de l'Europe. He wore white buckskin shoes--I begin with these as they were the first point of his person to attract the notice of the onlooker--lilac silk socks, a white flannel suit with a zig-zag black stripe, a violet tie secured by a sapphire and diamond pin, and a rakish panama hat. On his knees lay the _Matin_; the fingers of his left hand held a fragrant corona; his right hand was uplifted in a gesture, for he was talking. He was talking to a couple of ladies who sat near by, one a mild-looking Englishwoman of fifty, dressed in black, the other, her daughter, a beautiful girl of twenty-four. That Aristide should fly to feminine charms, like moth to candle, was a law of his being; that he should lie, with shriveled wings, at Miss Errington's feet was the obvious result. Her charms were of the winsome kind to which he was most susceptible. She had an oval face, a little mouth like crumpled rose petals (so Aristide himself described it), a complexion the mingling of ivory and peach blossom (Aristide again), a straight little nose, appealing eyes of the deepest blue veiled by sweeping lashes and fascinating fluffiness of dark hair over a pure brow. She had a graceful figure, and the slender foot below her white piqué skirt was at once the envy and admiration of Aix-les-Bains. Aristide talked. The ladies listened, with obvious amusement. In the easy hotel way he had fallen into their acquaintance. As the man of wealth, the careless player who took five-hundred-louis banks at the table with the five-louis minimum, and cleared out the punt, he felt it necessary to explain himself. I am afraid he deviated from the narrow path of truth. "What perfect English you speak," Miss Errington remarked, when he had finished his harangue and had put the corona between his lips. Her voice was a soft contralto. "I have mixed much in English society, since I was a child," replied Aristide, in his grandest manner. "Fortune has made me know many of your county families and members of Parliament." Miss Errington laughed. "Our M. P.'s are rather a mixed lot, Monsieur Pujol." "To me an English Member of Parliament is a high-bred conservative. I do not recognize the others," said Aristide. "Unfortunately we have to recognize them," said the elder lady with a smile. "Not socially, madame. They exist as mechanical factors of the legislative machine; but that is all." He swelled as if the blood of the Montmorencys and the Colignys boiled in his veins. "We do not ask them into our drawing rooms. We do not allow them to marry our daughters. We only salute them with cold politeness when we pass them in the street." "It's astonishing," said Miss Errington, "how strongly the aristocratic principle exists in republican France. Now, there's our friend, the Comte de Lussigny, for instance----"