almost detached, in Putney, with a wife known to have secret aspirations toward a page in buttons? Above all, was Mr Vetch, who earned a weekly wage, and not a large one, with his fiddle, but who had mysterious affinities of another sort, reminiscences of a phase in which he smoked cigars, had a hat-box and used cabs—besides visiting Boulogne? Anastasius Vetch had interfered in his life, atrociously, in a terrible crisis; but Hyacinth, who strove to cultivate justice in his own conduct, believed he had acted conscientiously and tried to esteem him, the more so as the fiddler evidently felt that he had something to make up to him and had treated him with marked benevolence for years. He believed, in short, that Mr Vetch took a sincere interest in him, and if he should meddle again would meddle in a different way: he used to see him sometimes looking at him with the kindest eyes. It would make a difference, therefore, whether he were of the people or not, inasmuch as in the day of the great revenge it would only be the people who should be saved. It was for the people the world was made: whoever was not of them was against them; and all others were cumberers, usurpers, exploiters, _accapareurs_, as M. Poupin used to say. Hyacinth had once put the question directly to Mr Vetch, who looked at him a while through the fumes of his eternal pipe and then said, “Do you think I’m an aristocrat?” “I didn’t know but you were a _bourgeois_,” the young man answered. “No, I’m neither. I’m a Bohemian.” “With your evening dress, every night?” “My dear boy,” said the fiddler, “those are the most confirmed.”