Now the Rue du Fouarre, though once a very famous thoroughfare, is to-day perhaps as squalid as any that drains its refuse by a single gutter into the Seine, and the widow had been no beauty even in the days when she followed the 106th of the Line as vivandiere and before she wedded Sergeant Jupille of that regiment. But she and I had struck up a friendship over a flesh-wound which I received in an affair of outposts on the Algueda, and thenceforward I taught myself to soften the edge of her white wine by the remembered virtues of her ointment, so that when Sergeant Jupille was cut off by a grapeshot in front of Salamanca, and his Philomene retired to take charge of his mother's wine shop in the Rue du Fouarre, she had enrolled my name high on the list of her prospective patrons. I felt myself, so to speak, a part of the goodwill of her house, and "Heaven knows," thought I, as I threaded the insalubrious street, "it is something for a soldier of the Empire to count even on this much in Paris to-day. _Est aliquid, quocunque loco, quocunque sacello...._" Madame Jupille knew me at once, and we fell (figuratively speaking) upon each other's neck. Her shop was empty, the whole quarter had trooped off to the review. After mingling our tears (again figuratively) over the fickleness of the capital, I inquired if she had any letters for me. "Why, no, comrade." "None?" I exclaimed with a very blank face. "Not one"; Madame Jupille eyed me archly, and relented. "The reason being that Mademoiselle is too discreet." "Ah!" I heaved a big sigh of relief. "You provoking woman, tell me what you mean by that?" "Well, now, it may have been ten days ago that a stranger called in and asked if I had any news of the corporal who praised my white wine. 'Have I any news,' said I, 'of a needle in a bundle of hay? They all praise it.'" (O, Madame Jupille!) "'The corporal I'm speaking of,' said he, 'is or was called Champdivers.' '_Was!_' I cried, 'you are not going to tell me he is dead?' and I declare to you, comrade, the tears came into my eyes. 'No, he is not,' said the stranger, 'and the best proof is that he will be here inquiring for letters before long. You are to tell him that if he expects one from'--see, I took the name down on a scrap of paper, and stuck it in a wine-glass here--'from Miss Flora Gilchrist, he will do well to wait in Paris until a friend finds means to deliver it by hand. And if he asks more about me, say that I am from'--tenez, I wrote the second name underneath--yes, that is it--'Mr. Romaine.'" "Confound his caution!" said I. "What sort of man was this messenger?" "O, a staid-looking man, dark and civil-spoken. You might call him an upper servant, or perhaps a notary's clerk; very plainly dressed, in black." "He spoke French?" "_Parfaitement._ What else?" "And he has not called again?"