The ex-Dealer in Happiness regarded them both benevolently. “For the first time in my life,” said he, “I think I have reason to be proud of my late profession. Like the artist who has toiled and struggled, I can, without immodesty, recognise my masterpiece. It was my original conception that Martin and Corinna, crude but honest souls, should find an incentive to the working out of their destiny by falling in love. Therefore I sent them out together. That they should have an honourable asylum, I sent them to my own kin. When I found they wouldn’t fall in love at all, I imagined the present felicitous combination. I have been aided by the little accident of a European war. But what matter? The Gods willed it, the Gods were on my side. Out of evil there inscrutably and divinely cometh good. My children, my heart is very full of the consolation that, at the end of many years that the locust hath eaten, I have perhaps justified my existence.” “_Mon père_,” cried Félise, “all my life long your existence has had the justification of heroic sacrifice.” “My dear,” said he, “if I hadn’t met adversity with a brave face, I should not have been a man—still less a philosopher. And now that my duty here is over, if I don’t go back to Paris and find some means of helping in the great conflict, I shall be unworthy of the name of Englishman. So as soon as I see you safely and exquisitely married, I shall leave you. I shall, however, come and visit you from time to time. But when I die”—he paused and fishing out a stump of pencil scribbled on the back of the menu card—“when I die, bury me in Paris on the south side of the Seine and put this inscription on my tombstone. One little vanity is accorded by the gods to every human being.” He threw the card on the table. On it was written: “_Ci-gît_ _Fortinbras_ _Marchand de Bonheur._” When the meal was over they went up to the prim and plushily furnished salon, where a wood fire was burning gaily. Bigourdin brought up a cobwebbed bottle of the Old Brandy of the Brigadier and uncorked it reverently. “We are going to drink to France,” said he. He produced from the cupboard whose doors were veiled with green-pleated silk, half a dozen of the great glass goblets and into each he poured a little of the golden liquid, which, as he had once said, contained the soul of the _Grande Armée_. “Stop a bit,” said Martin. “You’re making a mistake. There are only five of us.” “I am making no mistake at all,” said Bigourdin. “The sixth glass is for the shade of the brave old Brigadier. If he is not here now among us to honour the toast, I am no Christian man.” THE END THE WILLIAM J. LOCKE YEAR-BOOK *