“I should like to have seen you talking to the Zouave,” said Emmy.  “It would have made a pretty picture—­the two of you hobnobbing over a little marble table.”

“It was iron, painted yellow,” said Septimus.  “It wasn’t a resplendent cafe.”

“I wonder what he thought of you.”

“Well, he introduced me to his mother,” replied Septimus gravely, whereat Emmy broke into merry laughter, for the first time for many days.

“I’ve taken the appartement for a month and the aunt who can cook,” he remarked.

“What!” cried Emmy, who had not paid very serious regard to the narrative.  “Without knowing anything at all about it?”

She put on her hat and insisted on driving there incontinently, full of misgivings.  But she found a well-appointed house, a deep-bosomed, broad-beamed concierge, who looked as if she might be the mother of twenty helpful Zouaves, and an equally matronly and kindly-faced sister, a Madame Bolivard, the aunt aforesaid who could cook.

Thus, as the ravens fed Elijah, so did Zouaves and other casual fowl aid Septimus on his way.  Madame Bolivard in particular took them both under her ample wing, to the girl’s unspeakable comfort.  A brav’ femme, Madame Bolivard, who not only could cook, but could darn stockings and mend linen, which Emmy’s frivolous fingers had never learned to accomplish.  She could also prescribe miraculous tisanes for trivial ailments, could tell the cards, and could converse volubly on any subject under heaven; the less she knew about it, the more she had to say, which is a great gift.  It spared the girl many desolate and despairing hours.

It was a lonely, monotonous life.  Septimus she saw daily.  Now and then, if Septimus were known to be upstairs, Hegisippe Cruchot, coming to pay his filial respects to his mother and his mother’s bouillabaisse (she was from Marseilles) and her matelote of eels, luxuries which his halfpenny a day could not provide, would mount to inquire dutifully after his aunt and incidentally after the belle dame du troisieme.  He was their only visitor from the outside world, and as he found a welcome and an ambrosial form of alcohol compounded of Scotch whiskey and Maraschino (whose subtlety Emmy had learned from an eminent London actor-manager at a far-away supper party), he came as often as his respectful ideas of propriety allowed.

They were quaint gatherings, these, in the stiffly furnished little salon:  Emmy, fluffy-haired, sea-shell-cheeked, and softly raimented, lying indolently on the sofa amid a pile of cushions—­she had sent Septimus out to “La Samaritaine” to buy some (in French furnished rooms they stuff the cushions with cement), and he had brought back a dozen in a cab, so that the whole room heaved and swelled with them; Septimus, with his mild blue eyes and upstanding hair, looking like the conventional picture of one who sees a ghost; Hegisippe Cruchot, the outrageousness