"My God! A hundred and three to one. Why didn't you plank on your last penny." "I'm very well content with two thousand francs," said Andrew. "It's something against a rainy day." They reached the _guichet_ and Andrew drew his money. "Suppose the impossible animal hadn't won--you would have been rather sick." "No," Andrew replied, after a moment's thought. "I should have regarded my louis as a tribute to the memory of one who did me a great service." "I believe," said Bakkus, "that if I could only turn sentimentalist, I should make my fortune." "Let us go and find a drink," said Andrew. For the second time Elodie brought him luck. This time in the shape of a hundred and three louis, a goodly sum when one has to live from hand to mouth. And the time came, at the end of their engagement at _La Boîte Blanche_, when they lost even that precarious method of existence. For the first time in his life Andrew spent a month in vain search for employment. Dead season Paris had more variety artists than it knew what to do with. The provinces, so the rehabilitated Moignon and his confrères, the other agents, declared, in terms varying from apologetic stupor to frank brutality, had no use for Andrew-André and his unique entertainment. "But what shall I do?" asked the anxious André. "Wait, _mon cher_, we shall soon well arrange it," said Moignon. "?" pantomimed the other agents, with shrugged shoulders and helplessly outspread hands. And it happened too that Bakkus, the sweet ballad-monger, found himself on the same rocks of unemployment. "I have," said he, one evening, when the stranded pair were sitting outside a horrid little liquor retreat with a zinc bar in the Faubourg Saint-Denis--the luxury of _consommations_ at sixty centimes on the Grands Boulevards had faded from their dreams--"I have, my dear friend, just enough to carry me on for a fortnight." "And I too," said Andrew. "But your hundred louis at Longchamps?" "They're put away," said Andrew. "Thank God," said Bakkus. Andrew detected a lack of altruism in the pious note of praise. He did not love Bakkus to such a pitch of brotherly affection as would warrant his relieving him of responsibility for self support. He had already fed Bakkus for three days. "They're put away," he repeated. "Bring them out of darkness into the light of day," said Bakkus. "What are talents in a napkin? You are a capitalist--I am a man with ideas. May I order another of this _mastroquet's_ bowel-gripping absinthes in order to expound a scheme? Thank you, my dear Lackaday. _Oui, encore une_. Tell me have you ever been to England?" "No," said Lackaday. "Have you ever heard of Pierrots?" "On the stage--masked balls--yes." "But real Pierrots who make money?" "In England? What do you mean?" "There is in England a blatant, vulgar, unimaginative, hideous institution known as the Seaside." "Well?" said Andrew.