The Baron and his wife disputed volubly about the date of one of Paolo’s grand dinners in Paris; Gaeta yawned, and I was stricken with dumbness.  I could think of nothing to say which she would think worth hearing.  Soon, the tremendously steep descent into the valley gave me the best of excuses to jump down and relieve the horses, which the coachman was leading.  Somehow, I don’t quite know how, I fell back a good distance behind the carriage, and then I found myself so near the Boy, who had been slowly following, that it would have been rude not to join him.  After all, we had no quarrel, yet oddly enough we could not take up the thread of our intercourse exactly where it had been broken off.  There seemed to be a knot or a tangle in it, which would have to be smoothed out.

It was a wholly irrelevant incident which untied the knot, and left us as we had been, though there was no reason for it but a laugh which we had together.

The thing came about in this wise.  We arrived at a small hotel which boasted a garden, and was famous as a view-point.  From the door a carriage containing a man was about to drive away.  The man was approaching middle age, and had an air of quiet self-reliance which redeemed him from insignificance.  He was plainly dressed, in clothes which were not new, and altogether he did not appear to be a personage who, from the hotel-keeper’s point of view, would be of supreme importance.  Yet the landlord and another besieged the quiet man with compliments and pleadings, to which he did not seem inclined to listen.  Bowing gravely, he told his coachman to drive on, and in a moment had passed us as we stood in the road.

But when he had gone, the landlord and his assistant still had no eyes for us.  “Mark my words,” exclaimed the former, in a tone of anguish, “we shall lose our star.”

Were they astrologers, that they should fear this fate?

Our curiosity was excited, and seeing a head-waiterly person, who wore a mien between awe and stifled amusement, I called for beer which I did not wish to drink.  It was served on a table in the shady garden, and I enquired if the carriage just out of sight had contained a troublesome guest.

“Troublesome is not the word, Monsieur,” replied the waiter.  “But a thing has happened.  That gentleman whom you saw, arrived a few days ago, giving the name of Karl.  He took the cheapest room in the house; he drank one of the cheapest wines, having satisfied himself that the price was within his means.  To-day, he said that he was leaving, and asked for his bill.  When it was made out, the wine came to a franc more than he thought it ought.  ‘I do not complain,’ said he to our patron; ’if that is the price of the wine, I will pay, but I was told at the table it was less.  I do not consider the wine good enough for the price.’  This vexed the patron, because one does not think the more of a person who haggles over a franc,