But the calm of Arsène was the calm of thin ice over swiftly rushing waters. As the polished buffers of the last carriage swung out of sight around the curve with a curiously furtive effect, like the eyes of an alarmed animal, slipping backward into its burrow, he clenched the fingers of his right hand, and slipping his thumb nail under the edge of his upper teeth, drew it forward with a sharp click. At the same time he said something to his vanished master in the second person singular, which is far from being the address of affection on the lips of a valet-maître d'hôtel. Wheeling suddenly after this singular manifestation, Monsieur Sigard found himself the object of close and seemingly amused scrutiny on the part of an individual standing directly behind him. There was something so extremely disconcerting in this gentleman's unexpected proximity, and in his very evident enjoyment of the situation, that Arsène was upon the point of turning abruptly away, when the other addressed him, speaking the colloquial French of their class, with the slightest possible hint of foreign accent. "Bah, vieux! Is it that I do not know what they are, the patrons? Oh, lalà!" "Avec ça! There are some who have it, an astounding audacity!" said Arsène to the air over the stranger's head. "Farceur!" replied the stranger, to the air over Arsène's. And then-- "There are two parrakeets that have need of plucking across the way," he added, reflectively. "There are two empty sacks here to put the feathers in," answered Arsène, with alacrity; and ten minutes later, oblivious to the chill damp of the March morning, Monsieur Sigard and his new-found acquaintance, seated at a little table in front of a near-by wine-shop, were preparing in company the smoky-green mixture of absinthe and water which Paris slang has dubbed a parrakeet. On the part of Arsène the operation was performed with elaborate solicitude, and as he poured a tiny stream of water over the lump of sugar on the flat spoon balanced deftly across the glass, he held his head tipped sidewise and his left eye closed, in the manner of a contemplative fowl, and was oblivious to all but the delectable business of the moment.