"Monsieur le Maire and Monsieur le Président du Syndicat d'Initiative, I am sick to death of playing the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine in the Tournée Gulland. I was born to higher things. Entrust to me"--he converged the finger-tips of both hands to his bosom--"to me, Aristide Pujol, the organisation of Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir, and you will not regret it." The Mayor and the President laughed. * * * * * But my astonishing friend prevailed--not indeed to the extent of being appointed a Petronius, _arbiter élegantiarum_, of the town of Perpignan; but to the extent of being employed, I fear in a subordinate capacity, by the Mayor and the Syndicat in the work of propagandism. The Tournée Gulland found another drum and went its tuneful but weary way; and Aristide remained gloriously behind and rubbed his hands with glee. At last he had found permanence in a life where heretofore had been naught but transience. At last he had found a sphere worthy of his genius. He began to nourish insensate ambitions. He would be the Great Benefactor of Perpignan. All Roussillon should bless his name. Already he saw his statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot. His rise in the social scale of the town was meteoric, chiefly owing to the goodwill of Madame Coquereau, the widowed mother of the Mayor. She was a hard-featured old lady, with a face that might have been made of corrugated iron painted yellow and with the eyes of an old hawk. She dressed always in black, was very devout and rich and narrow and iron-willed. Aristide was presented to her one Sunday afternoon at the Café on the Place Arago--where on Sunday afternoons all the fashion of Perpignan assembles--and--need I say it?--she fell at once a helpless victim to his fascination. Accompanying her grandmother was Mademoiselle Stéphanie Coquereau, the Mayor's niece (a wealthy orphan, as Aristide soon learned), nineteen, pretty, demure, perfectly brought up, who said "_Oui, Monsieur_" and "_Non, Monsieur_" with that quintessence of modest grace which only a provincial French Convent can cultivate. Aristide's heart left his body and rolled at the feet of Mademoiselle Stéphanie. It was a way with Aristide's heart. It was always doing that. He was of Provence and not of Peckham Rye or Hoboken, and he could not help it.