Could anything have been more exquisite? The old chap is out some hundred thousand lire on the transaction, because, of course, Cagliacci confiscated it like the other. It was a sight to remember,--the two pictures side by side in his room, and Michel and Sigard cursing each other above them! We all went on to Milan by the next train, except Sigard, who did the prudent thing on the appearance of his padrone, and disappeared, but Michel's appeal to the French consulate was of no effect. The consul told him flat that he was going directly against the law in trying to get old works of art over the frontier, and that he couldn't plead ignorance after the detail of the false bottom. Sassevero says the Old Man is immensely pleased with the way you handled your end of the affair. The funny part of it is that Sigard apparently hadn't the most remote suspicion of your being in any way involved in his catastrophe. Your most devoted, CAVALETTO. [Illustration] Little Tapin HIS name was Jean-Marie-Michel Jumière, and the first eighteen years of his life were spent near the little Breton village of Plougastel. They were years of which each was, in every respect, like that which went before, and, in every respect, like that which followed after: years, that is to say, devoid of incident, beyond the annual pardon, when the peasants came from far and near to the quaint little church, to offer their prayers at the cemetery Calvary, and display their holiday costumes, and make love, and exchange gossip on the turf round about. It is a land of wide and wind-swept hillsides, this, imbued with the strange melancholy of a wild and merciless sea, and wherein there are no barriers of convention or artificiality between earth and sky, man and his Maker; but Jean-Marie loved it for its very bleakness. From the doorway of his mother's cottage, standing, primly white, in the midst of great rocks and strawberry fields, with its thatched roof drawn down, like a hood, about its ears, as if in protection against the western gales, he could look out across the broad harbor of Brest to the Goulet, the gateway to that great Atlantic whose mighty voice came to his ears in stormy weather, muttering against the barrier of the shore. And this voice of the sea spoke to Jean-Marie of many things, but, most of all, of the navies of France, of the mighty battleships which went out from Brest to unimagined lands, far distant, China, America, and the southern islands, whence comrades, older than himself, brought back curious treasures, coral, and shells, and coins, and even parrots, to surprise the good people of Plougastel. He looked at them enviously, as they gathered about the door of Père Yvetot's wine-shop, when they were home on leave, and spun sailor yarns for his delighted ears. How wonderful they were, these men who had seen the world,--Toulon, and Marseille, and