“If you aren’t in a hurry to get back to Martigny, Joseph,” said I, changing my tone, “I’ll tell you what you can do for me.  You may take some of my luggage down to the Riviera.  I’m expecting a portmanteau to arrive here by rail to-night or to-morrow morning, with plenty of clothing in it.  But there are those hold-alls which Finois has carried for so long.  I can’t travel about with them in railway carriages; at that I draw the line; yet if I sent them by grande vitesse, their contents would be injured or stolen.  Take them down to Monte Carlo for me.  I shall go there sooner or later, to meet some friends of mine who are motoring, and I shall stop at the Royal.”

Joseph’s face would have put radium to shame, with the light it generated.

“Monsieur is not joking?  He is in earnest?” the poor fellow stammered.

“Most certainly.  And when we meet on the Riviera, we will talk over a scheme for your future of which I’ve been thinking.  If you would like to buy Finois of your patron, and two or three other animals only less admirable than he, setting up in business for yourself, I think I know a man who might advance you the money.”

“Oh, Monsieur!”

Had there been a little more of the French, or a little less of the Swiss, in honest Joseph’s blood, I think that he would have fallen on his knees and rained kisses on my mild-stained boots.  The Swiss upped the balance, luckily for us both, and kept him erect; but there was a suspicious glitter in his deep eyes, and a sudden pinkness of his respectable brown nose, which gave to his “Oh, Monsieur!” more meaning than a volume of protestations.

His hand came out impulsively, then flew back humbly to his side, but I put out mine and grasped it.

“Monsieur, I would die for you,” he said.

“I would prefer,” I returned, “that you should live—­for Innocentina.”

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVII

The Strange Mushroom

    “Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with
    my face?”
          
                                      —­SHAKESPEARE.

When Joseph had gone, with his pockets and his heart both full to bursting, I felt much like the captain of a small fishing vessel, wrecked in strange seas, who has seen his comrades depart on rafts, while he stayed on board his sinking ship alone with three biscuits and a gill of water.  There was also a certain resemblance between me and a well-meaning plant which has been pulled up by its roots just as it had begun to grow nicely, and then stuck into the earth again, upside down, to do the best it can.