This computation chilled my hopes.  What family remains ten years in a spot—­above all, a spot on that fluctuating periphery of Paris, where the mighty capital, year after year, bursts belt after belt?  Where might they have gone?  Francine!—­Francine must be twenty-two.  Married, of course.  Her husband, no doubt, has dragged her off to some other department.  Her parents have followed.  March, volunteer, and disentangle yourself from these profitless speculations!

Ten minutes farther on, in the shade of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec, I saw a red gable and the sign of a tavern.  As a tourist I have a passion for a cabaret:  in practice, I find Vefours to unite perhaps a greater number of advantages.

[Illustration:  Love left alone.]

Some soldiers of the Fortieth were drinking and laughing in a corner.  I took a table not far off, and drew my cold victuals out of my box of japanned tin, which they doubtless took for a new form of canteen.  The red-fisted garcon, without waiting for orders, set up before me, like ten-pins, a castor in wood with two enormous bottles, and a litre of that rinsing of the vats which, under the name “wine of the country,” is so distressingly similar in every neighborhood.  Resigned to anything, I was about drawing out my slice of ham, the chicken seeming to me just there somewhat too proud a bird and out of harmony with the local color, when my glance met two gray eyes regarding my own in the highest state of expansion.  The lashes, the brows, the hair and the necklace of short beard were all very thick and quite gray.  The face they garnished was that of the tavern-keeper.

[Illustration:  “Fond of chicken.”]

“Why, it is you, after all, Father Joliet!” I said, after a rapid inspection of his figure.

[Illustration:  The wife.]

“Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the Americain-flamand!” cried the host, striking one hand into the other at the imminent risk of breaking his pipe.  In a trice he trundled off my bottle of rinsings, and replaced it by one of claret with an orange seal, set another glass, and posted himself in front of me.

I asked the waiter for two plates, and with a slight blush evoked the chicken from my box.  The soldiers of the Fortieth opened a battery of staring and hungry eyes.

“And how came you here?” asked I of Joliet.

“It is I who am at the head of the hotel,” he replied, proudly pointing out the dimensions of the place by spreading his hands.  “My old establishment has sunk into the fosses of the fort:  it was a transaction between the government and myself.”

“And was the transaction a good one for you?”

“Not so bad, not so bad,” said he, winking his honest gray eyes with a world of simple cunning.  “It cannot be so very bad, since I owe nothing on the hotel, and the cellar is full, and I am selling wholesale and retail.”