“The woman—she—she married. I am glad to say she’s giving her husband a devil of a time.” He laughed nervously. Huckaby, with surprising tact, followed on the wrong scent like a puppy. “You can avenge the poor fellow and yourself at the same time,” said he. “Women are all alike. It’s right that one of them should be made to suffer. You have it in your power to make one of them suffer the tortures of hell.” “Yes, yes, I’ll do it,” cried Quixtus. “No time like the present.” “You’re right,” said Quixtus. “We’ll go to Paris together.” * * * * * For the first few days in Paris Quixtus had little time to devote to the secondary object of his visit. The meetings and excursions of the Congress absorbed his attention. His Parisian confrères took him to their homes and exhibited their collections of flint instruments, their wives and their daughters. He attended intimate dinners, the words _sans cérémonie_ being underlined in the invitation, where all the men, who had worn evening dress in the morning at a formal function of the Congress, assembled in the salon gravely attired in tightly-buttoned frock-coats and wearing dogskin gloves which they only took off when they sat down to table. His good provincial colleagues, who thought they might just as well hear the chimes at midnight while they were in Paris as not, insisted on his accompanying them in their mild dissipation: This generally consisted in drinking beer at a brasserie filled with parti-coloured ladies and talking palæolithic gossip amid the bewildering uproar of a Tzigane band. Now and again Huckaby, who assured him that he was prosecuting his researches in the fauna of the Hôtel Continental, where, on Huckaby’s advice, they were staying, would accompany him on such adventures.