"Suppose I lend you the money for the railway tickets?" said my master kindly. "O Monsieur," she cried, "I should thank you from the depths of my heart. _Grandpère_," she turned to the old man who, ashen faced, was staring in front of him, "Monsieur will lend us enough money to get to Chambéry." "I can go no further," he murmured. Then his eyelids quivered, his body moved spasmodically, and he swayed sideways off the chair on to the ground. We rushed to aid him. The girl put his head on her lap. My master bade me run into the café for brandy. When I returned the old man was dead. Narcisse sat placidly by, with his tongue out, eyeing his master ironically. "You are the man," his glance implied, "who said that nothing happens here." I have known many dogs in my life, but never so mocking and cynical a dog as Narcisse. * * * * * It was nearly midnight before my master and I sat down again outside the café. The intervening hours had been spent in journeying to and from the nearest village, and obtaining the necessary services of doctor and curé. My master was smoking his porcelain pipe, as usual, but strangely silent. A faint circle of light came from the open ground-floor window of the café. The white road gleamed dimly, and beyond the hushed valley the hills loomed vague against a black, starlit sky. In the lighted room a few peasants from neighbouring farms drank their sour white wine and discussed the death in low voices. In other circumstances my master would have joined them under pretext of getting nearer the Heart of Life, and would have told them amazing tales of Ekaterinoslav or Valladolid till they reeled home drunk with wine and wonder. And I should have been abed. But to-night Paragot seemed to prefer the silent company of Narcisse and myself. "What do you think of it all, Asticot?" he asked at length. "Of what, master?" "Death." "It frightens me," was all I could answer. "What I resent about it," said my master reflectively, "is that one is not able to have any personal concern in the most interesting event in one's career. If you could even follow your own funeral and have a chance of weeping for yourself! You are never so important as when you are a corpse--and you miss it all. I have a good mind not to die. It is either the silliest or the wisest action of one's life; I wonder which." Presently the girl came down the passage of the café, stood for a moment in the doorway, and seeing Paragot advanced to the table. "You are very kind, Monsieur," she said, "and for what you have done I thank you from my heart." "It was very little," said my master. "Asticot, why do you not give Mademoiselle your chair? Your manners are worse than those of Narcisse. Mademoiselle, do me the pleasure of being seated." She sat down, her feet apart, peasant fashion, her hands in her lap. "If I had not lost the twenty francs he would not have died," she said dejectedly.