How they managed to botch up her interior so that she moved unpushed is a mystery which Aristide, not divining, could not reveal; and when and where he himself learned to drive a motor-car is also vague. I believe the knowledge came by nature. He was a fellow of many weird accomplishments. He could conjure; he could model birds and beasts out of breadcrumb; he could play the drum--so well that he had a kettle-drum hanging round his neck during most of his military service; he could make omelettes and rabbit-hutches; he could imitate any animal that ever emitted sound--a gift that endeared him to children; he could do almost anything you please--save stay in one place and acquire material possessions. The fact that he had never done a thing before was to him no proof of his inability to do it. In his superb self-confidence he would have undertaken to conduct the orchestra at Covent Garden or navigate a liner across the Atlantic. Knowing this, I cease to bother my head about so small a matter as the way in which he learned to drive a motor-car. Behold him, then, one raw March morning, scuttering along the road that leads from Arles to Salon, in Provence. He wore a goat-skin coat and a goat-skin cap drawn down well over his ears. His handsome bearded face, with its lustrous, laughing eyes, peeped out curiously human amid the circumambient shagginess. There was not a turn visible in the long, straight road that lost itself in the far distant mist; not a speck on it signifying cart or creature. Aristide Pujol gave himself up to the delirium of speed and urged the half-bursting engine to twenty miles an hour. In spite of the racing-track surface, the crazy car bumped and jolted; the sides of the rickety bonnet clashed like cymbals; every valve wheezed and squealed; every nut seemed to have got loose and terrifically clattered; rattling noises, grunting noises, screeching noises escaped from every part; it creaked and clanked like an over-insured tramp-steamer in a typhoon; it lurched as though afflicted with loco-motor ataxy; and noisome vapours belched forth from the open exhaust-pipe as though the car were a Tophet on wheels. But all was music in the ears of Aristide. The car was going (it did not always go), the road scudded under him, and the morning air dashed stingingly into his face. For the moment he desired nothing more of life.