Miss Lucinda supported this pious fiction through with a simplicity that quite deceived the Frenchman.  He did not think it so incongruous as it was.  He had seen women of sixty, rouged, and jewelled, and furbelowed, foot it deftly in the halls of the Faubourg St. Germain in his earliest youth; and this cheery, healthy woman, with lingering blooms on either cheek, and uncapped head of curly black hair but slightly strewn with silver, seemed quite as fit a subject for the accomplishment.  Besides, he was poor,—­and this offered so easy a way of paying the debt he had so dreaded!  Well said Solomon,—­“The destruction of the poor is their poverty!” For whose moral sense, delicate sensitivenesses, generous longings, will not sometimes give way to the stringent need of food and clothing, the gall of indebtedness, and the sinking consciousness of an empty purse and threatening possibilities?

Monsieur Leclerc’s face brightened.

“Ah! with what grand pleasure shall I teach you the dance!”

But it fell dark again as he proceeded,—­

“Though not one, nor two, nor three, nor four quarters shall be of value sufficient to achieve my payment.”

“Then, if that troubles you, why, I should like to take some French lessons in the evening, when you don’t have classes.  I learned French when I was quite a girl, but not to speak it very easily; and if I could get some practice and the right way to speak, I should be glad.”

“And I shall give you the real Parisien tone, Mees Lucinda!” said he, proudly.  “I shall be as if it were no more an exile when I repeat my tongue to you!”

And so it was settled.  Why Miss Lucinda should learn French any more than dancing was not a question in Monsieur Leclerc’s mind.  It is true, that Chaldaic would, in all probability, be as useful to our friend as French; and the flying over poles and hanging by toes and fingers, so eloquently described by the Apostle of the Body in these “Atlantic” pages, would have been as well adapted to her style and capacity as dancing;—­but his own language, and his own profession! what man would not have regarded these as indispensable to improvement, particularly when they paid his board?

During the latter three weeks of Monsieur Leclerc’s stay with Miss Lucinda he made himself surprisingly useful.  He listed the doors against approaching winter breezes,—­he weeded in the garden,—­trimmed, tied, trained, wherever either good office was needed,—­mended china with an infallible cement, and rickety chairs with the skill of a cabinet-maker; and whatever hard or dirty work he did, he always presented himself at table in a state of scrupulous neatness:  his long brown hands showed no trace of labor; his iron-gray hair was reduced to smoothest order; his coat speckless, if threadbare; and he ate like a gentleman, an accomplishment not always to be found in the “best society,” as the phrase goes,—­whether the best in