“Father Joliet!” I cried.

“Present!” shouted the personage thus designated at my appeal to his name.  I turned round, toweled, and he grasped my hands.  The unusual hour, appropriate as I supposed only to some porter or other stipendiary visitor of my hotel, caused to shine out with startling refulgence the morning splendors in which Papa Joliet had arrayed himself.  He wore a courtly dress, appropriate to the most formal possible ceremony; his black suit was glossy; his hat was glossy; his varnished pumps were more than glossy—­they were phosphorescent.  Gloves only were wanting to his honest hands.

[Illustration:  PERRUQUIER.]

Soaped, napkined and generally extinguished, I could only stammer, “You here in Brussels?  What a droll meeting!”

“Wherefore droll?” asked Joliet, with a huge surprise, which lasted him all through his next sentence.  “I come here to marry my daughter.  Everything is ready; we count on your presence at the wedding; the lawyer has drawn up the contract; and the breakfast is now cooking at the best restaurant in the place.”

“Francine’s wedding, my dear Joliet!” I exclaimed.  And, going back to my apprehensions at her furtive disappearance from Carlsruhe, and to my conjectures of some amorous mystery between her and her Yankee traducer, Kraaniff, I added gravely, “It is very creditable!”

“How, creditable—­and droll?” repeated the honest man, evidently much surprised at my own accumulating surprises.  “Did not you hear?”

[Illustration:  Father Joliet.]

“Not the faintest word,” I said, “but I am none the less gratified to find this affair ending, as it should, in the presence of a lawyer.  As for your wedding-invitation, my good friend, you are a little tardy in delivering it, for it is exactly to-day that I am obliged to attend at the marriage of one of my friends, M. Fortnoye.”

“Ah, that is a good joke!” cried Joliet, breaking into an explosion of laughter and clapping me pleasantly on the shoulder—­an action which caused a slight frown on the part of Charles.  “You always would have your jest, Monsieur the American!  Tease me and scare me as much as you like:  I like these hoaxes better before a wedding than after.  Hold that,” he added, extending his hand as if it were a piece of merchandise.

I “held” it, and he went on, dwelling slowly on his words:  “If you are at Henri Fortnoye’s wedding you will be at Francine Joliet’s also, for both of these persons are to be married at one church.”

“Impossible!” I exclaimed, dropping the hand and stepping back.

“What! again?” said Joliet, his manly face visibly darkening.  “Droll! and creditable! and impossible!  Why impossible?” Then he dropped his head and looked angrily at the floor.  “Ah, yes, even you,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the boards, “believed that a French girl, trained as French girls are trained, would flirt and expose herself to remark; and all on account of such a man as your compatriot, the other American!  Well! well! you ought to know your countrymen best.”