"I'll not say good-bye," Aristide Pujol declared, amiably. "I'll get through my business long before you've done your sight-seeing, and you'll find me waiting for you near the hotel. _Au revoir, cher ami._" He smiled, lifted his hat, waved his hand in a friendly way, and darted off across the square. The old _gardien_ came out with the keys and took me off to the Tour de Constance, where Protestants were imprisoned pell-mell after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; thence to the Tour des Bourguignons, where I forget how many hundred Burgundians were massacred and pickled in salt; and, after these cheery exhibitions, invited me to walk round the ramparts and inspect the remaining eighteen towers of the enceinte. As the mistral, however, had sprung up and was shuddering across the high walls, I declined, and, having paid him his fee, descended to the comparative shelter of the earth. There I found Aristide Pujol awaiting me at the corner of the narrow street in which the hotel was situated. He was wearing--like most of the young bloods of Provence in winter-time--a short, shaggy, yet natty goat-skin coat, ornamented with enormous bone buttons, and a little cane valise stood near by on the kerb of the square. He was not alone. Walking arm in arm with him was a stout, elderly woman of swarthy complexion and forbidding aspect. She was attired in a peasant's or small shopkeeper's rusty Sunday black and an old-fashioned black bonnet prodigiously adorned with black plumes and black roses. Beneath this bonnet her hair was tightly drawn up from her forehead; heavy eyebrows overhung a pair of small, crafty eyes, and a tuft of hair grew on the corner of a prognathous jaw. She might have been about seven-and-forty. Aristide Pujol, unlinking himself from this unattractive female, advanced and saluted me with considerable deference. "Monseigneur----" said he. As I am neither a duke nor an archbishop, but a humble member of the lower automobiling classes, the high-flown title startled me. "Monseigneur, will you permit me," said he, in French, "to present to you Mme. Gougasse? Madame is the _patronne_ of the Café de l'Univers, at Carcassonne, which doubtless you have frequented, and she is going to do me the honour of marrying me to-morrow." [Illustration: ANYTHING LESS CONGRUOUS AS THE BRIDE-ELECT OF THE DEBONAIR ARISTIDE PUJOL IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE] The unexpectedness of the announcement took my breath away. "Good heavens!" said I, in a whisper. Anyone less congruous as the bride-elect of the debonair Aristide Pujol it was impossible to imagine. However, it was none of my business. I raised my hat politely to the lady. "Madame, I offer you my sincere felicitations. As an entertaining husband I am sure you will find M. Aristide Pujol without a rival."