Indeed, he had the incommunicable gift of setting his soul a-dancing as he played, of putting the devil into the feet of those who danced. The wedding party were enraptured. If he had consumed all the bumpers he was offered, he would have been as drunk as a fiddler at an Irish wake. During a much needed interval in the dancing he advanced to the edge of the verandah and as a solo played Stephen Heller's "Tarantella," which crowned his triumph. With his unkempt beard and swarthy face and ridiculous pearl-buttoned velveteens, there was an air of rakish picturesqueness about Paragot, and he retained, what indeed he never quite lost, a certain aristocracy of demeanour. Wild cries of "_Bis!_" saluted him when he stopped. Men clapped each other on the shoulder uttering clumsy oaths, women smiled at him largely. Madame Bringuet, reeking in her tight gown, held up to him a brimming glass of champagne; the bride threw him a rose. He kissed the flower, put it in his button-hole and after bowing low drank to her health. I recalled my childish ambition to keep a fried fish shop and despised it heartily. If I only could play the violin like Paragot, thought I, and win the plaudits of the multitude, what greater glory could the earth hold? The practical Blanquette woke me from my dreams. Now was the moment, said she, to go round with the hat. I swung myself down from the verandah, the traditional shell (in lieu of a hat) in my hand, and went my round. Money was poured into it. Time after time I emptied it into my bulging pockets. When I returned to the verandah, Blanquette's eyes distended strangely. She glanced at Paragot, who smiled at her in an absent manner. For the moment the artist in him was predominant. He was the centre of his little world, and its adulation was as breath to his nostrils. This is what I, the mature man, know to be the case. To me, then, he was but the King receiving tribute from his subjects. When Paragot with a flourish of his bow responded to the encore, I found my hand slip into Blanquette's and there it remained in a tight grip till flushed and triumphant he again acknowledged the applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face.