My own room was lit by the yellow flame of a solitary candle, rising, untroubled by the slightest breath of wind, straight into the air.  A large rug of old-rose covered the floor, an old-rose velvet canopy draped a long table, hanging down at the corners in straight, heavy creases, and the wallpaper was a golden yellow with faint stripes of silvery-gray glaze.  By the side of the wooden bed stood a high cabinet holding about fifty terra-cotta and porcelain figurines, shiny shepherdesses with shiny pink cheeks, Louis XV peasants with rakes on their shoulders, and three little dogs made of a material the color of cocoa.  The gem of the collection was an eighteenth-century porcelain of a youth and a maid sitting on opposite sides of a curved bench over whose center rose a blossoming bush.  The youth, dressed in black, and wearing yellow stockings, looked with an amorous smile at the girl in her gorgeous dress of flowering brocade.

A marbly-white fireplace stood in the corner, overhung by a great Louis XV mirror with a gilt frame of rich, voluptuous curves.  On the mantel lay a scarf of old-rose velvet smelling decidedly musty.  Alone, apart, upon this mantel, as an altar, stood a colored plaster bust of Jeanne d’Arc, showing her in the beauty of her winsome youth.  The pale, girlish face dominated the shadowy room with its dreamy, innocent loveliness.

There came a knock at the door, and so still was the town and the house that the knock had the effect of something dramatic and portentous.  A big man, with bulging, pink cheeks, a large, chestnut mustache, and brown eyes full of philosophic curiosity, stood in the doorway.  The uniform that he was wearing was unusually neat and clean.

“So you are the American I am to have as neighbor,” said he.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I am the caporal in charge of the depot of the engineers in the cellar,” continued my visitor, “and I thought I’d come in and see how you were.”

I invited him to enter.

“Do you find yourself comfortable here, son?”

“Yes.  I consider myself privileged to have the use of the room.  Have a cigarette?”

“Are these American cigarettes?”

“Yes.”

“Your American tobacco is fine, son.  But in America everybody is a millionaire and has the best of everything—­isn’t that so?  I should like to go to America.”

“A Frenchman is never happy out of France.”

Comfortably seated in a big, ugly chair, he puffed his cigarette and meditated.

“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted.  “We Frenchmen love the good things, and think we can get them in France better than anywhere else.  The solid satisfactions of life—­good wine—­good cheese.”  He paused.  “You see, son, all that (tout ca) is an affair of mine—­in civilian life (dans le civil) I am a grocer at Macon in Bourgogne.”

For a little while we talked of Burgundy, which I had often visited in my student days at Lyons.  There came another pause, and the Burgundian said:—­