[Illustration:  “THAT IS THE DEJEUNER OF NAPOLEON".]

They were charming little beasts, one mouse-colour, one dark-brown with large, grey-rimmed spectacles, and both animals were of the texture of uncut velvet.  The former carried an excellent pack, which put mine to shame; the latter bore a boy’s saddle, and the two were being fed with great bread crusts by a bewitching young woman of about twenty-six or -eight, wearing one of the toad-stool hats affected by the donkey-women of Mentone.  She looked up at our approach, and having surveyed the pack and proportions of Finois with cold scorn, her interest in our procession incontestably focused upon Joseph.  She tossed her head a little on one side, shot at the muleteer an arrow-gleam, half defiant, half coquettish, from a pair of big grey eyes fringed heavily with jet.  She moistened full red lips, while a faint colour lit her cheeks, under the deep stain of tan and a tiger-lily powdering of freckles.  Then, having seen the weary Joseph visibly rejuvenate in the brief sunshine of her glance, she turned away, and gave her whole attention to the donkeys.

“Hungry, Joseph?” I asked.

He had to bethink himself before he could answer.  Then he replied that he had food in his pocket, bread and cheese, and that Finois carried his own dinner.  They would be ready to go on, if I chose, or to remain, if that were my pleasure.  “It is too early for a final stop, at a place where there can no amusement for the evening,” said I.  “We had better go on.  If you intend to stay outside with Finois, I’ll send you a bottle of beer, and you can, if you will, drink my health.”

With this I went in, feeling sure that the time of my absence would not pass heavily for Joseph.

This was the hour at which, in England, we would sip a cup of tea as an excuse for talk with a pretty woman in her drawing-room; but having tramped steadily for some hours in mountain air, I was in a mood to understand the tastes of that class who like an egg or a kipper for “a relish to their tea.”  I looked for the landlady with the illustrious ancestors, and could not find her; but voices on the floor above led me to the stairway.  I mounted, passed a doorway, and found myself in a room which instinct told me had been the scene of the historic dejeuner.

It was a low-ceilinged room with wainscoted walls, and at first glance one received an impression of the past.  There was a soft lustre of much-polished mahogany, and a glitter of old silver candelabra; I thought that I detected a faint fragrance of lavender lurking in the clean curtains, or perhaps it might have come from the square of ancient damask covering the table, on which a meal was spread.

That meal consisted of chicken; a salad of pale green lettuce and coraline tomatoes; a slim-necked bottle of white wine; a custard with a foaming crest of beaten egg and sugar; and a dish of purple figs.  Food for the gods, and with only a boy to eat it—­but a remarkable boy.  I gazed, and did not know what to make of him.  He also gazed at me, but his look lacked the curiosity with which I honoured him.  It expressed frank and (in the circumstances) impudent disapproval.  Having bestowed it, he nonchalantly continued his conversation with the plump and capped landlady, who was evidently enraptured with him, while I was left to stand unnoticed on the threshold.