In the Bois, one day, I met madame Aribaud. By madame "Aribaud" I mean the wife of a very popular dramatist, and I call them Aribaud because it wouldn't do to mention their real name. I like meeting madame Aribaud when I am in Paris. It refreshes me, not only because she isn't preceded by a gust of scent, and doesn't daub her mouth clown red, like so many Parisiennes, but because she is so cheerful. She diffuses cheerfulness. She sat beaming at her little son, while he scattered crumbs for the birds, and she informed me--it was in 1912--that he was in the latest fashion, having a nurse from England to give him the real English pronunciation, though as yet he was hardly a linguist. And the nurse said, "I tell madam we must be pietient with 'im; we can't expect 'im to talk like I do hall at once." Also the lady informed me that they had finished arranging their new house, and that on the morrow I must go there to déjeuner. Very readily I went, and they showed me the "English nursery," and an American contrivance that she had presented to her husband for his dressing-room--"_Comme ils sont pratiques, les américains_!"--and an antique or two that she had picked up for his study; and, not least, she showed us both some croquettes de pommes that looked ethereal and--I have never tasted croquettes de pommes like madame Aribaud's! I always say she is the most domesticated of pretty women, and her husband the most pampered of good fellows. Playgoers who know him merely by his comedies, in which married people get on together so badly up to the fourth act, might be surprised to see inside his villa. Only when he and I were lounging in the study afterwards--my hostess was in the little garden, pretending to be a horse--I said to him, as the boy's shouts came up to us through the open window, "Doesn't the child disturb you out there when you're busy?" My friend nodded. "Sometimes," he acknowledged, "he disturbs me. What would you have? He must play, and the 'garden' is too diminutive for him to go far away in it. It makes me think of what Dumas père said when he paid a visit to his son's chalet in the suburbs--'Open your dining-room window and give your garden some air!' Once or twice I have wondered whether I should work in a front room, instead, but to tell you the truth, I always come to the conclusion that I like the noise. Believe me, a dramatist may suffer from worse drawbacks than a child's laughter." He blew smoke thoughtfully, and added, "I had a wife who was childless." Now, though I knew Maurice Aribaud very well indeed, I had never heard that this was his second marriage, and I suppose I stared. "Yes," he said again, "I had a wife who was childless." And then, with many pauses, he told me a lot that I had not suspected about his life, and though I can't pretend to remember his precise words, or the exact order in which details were forthcoming, I am going to quote him as well as I can. * * * * *