The cab-horse, however, was now turned out to grass—in August Paris. He had been there three days and his head swam with the wonder of it. As he walked along the indicated route to the Petit Cornichon in the airless dark, he felt the thrill of freedom and of romance. Down the Boulevard Sébastopol he went, past the Tour Saint Jacques, through the Place du Châtelet over the Pont au Change and across the Île de la Cité to the Boulevard Saint Michel, and turned to the right along the Boulevard Saint Germain until he came to the Rue Bonaparte and his destination. It was the sweltering cool of the evening. Paris sat out of doors, at cafés, at gateways in shirt sleeves and loosened bodices, at shop fronts, at dusty tables before humble restaurants. Pedestrians walked languidly in quest of ultimate seats. In the wide thoroughfares the omnibuses went their accustomed route; but motor-cabs whizzed unfrequent for lack of custom—they who could afford to ride in taxi-autos on the _rive gauche_ were far away in cooler regions—and the old horses of crawling fiacres hung stagnant heads. Only the stale dregs of Paris remained in the Boul’ Mich. Yet it was Fairyland to the emancipated professor _in partibus_ who paused here and there to catch the odd phrases of his mother tongue which struck his ears with delicious unfamiliarity. Paris, too, that close, sultry evening, smelled of unutterable things; but to Martin Overshaw it was the aroma of a Wonder City. He found without difficulty the Café-Restaurant Dufour whose gilded style and title eclipsed the modest sign of the “Petit Cornichon” prudently allowed to remain in porcelain letters on the glass of door and windows. Under the ægis, as it were, of the poor “little gherkin” and independent of the magnificent Dufour establishment, was the announcement displayed: “_Déjeuners 1 fr. 50. Dîners 2 fr. Vin Compris._” The ground floor was a small café, newly decorated with fresco panels of generously unclad ladies dropping roses on goat-legged gentlemen: symptoms of the progressive mind of the ambitious Monsieur Dufour. Only two tables were occupied—by ruddy-faced provincials engaged over coffee and dominoes. To Martin, standing embarrassed, came a pallid waiter. “_Monsieur désire?_” “_Le Restaurant._” “_C’est en haut, monsieur, Au premier._” He pointed to a meagre staircase on the left-hand side. Martin ascended and found himself alone in a ghostly-tabled room. From a doorway emerged another pallid waiter, who also addressed him with the enquiry: “_Monsieur désire?_”—but the enquiry was modulated with a certain subtle inflection of surprise and curiosity. “I am expecting a lady,” said Martin. “_Bien, monsieur._ A table for two? _Voici._” He drew back an inviting chair. “I should like this one by the window,” said Martin. The room being on the entresol, the ceiling was low and the place reeked with reproachful reminders of long-forgotten one-franc-fifty and two-franc meals.