‘That’s all very well for you,’ her listener complained sombrely.  ’But for me?  Where shall I stop when I come to Paris?’

’With me.  You shall be my guest.  I will kill you if you ever go elsewhere.  You shall pass your old age in a big chair in the best room, and Camille and I will nurse your gout and make herb-tea for you.’

‘And I shall sit and think of what might have been.’

’Yes, we’ll indulge all your little foibles.  You shall sit and “feel foolish”—­from dawn to dewy eve.’

XII.

If you had chanced to be walking in the Bois-de-Boulogne this afternoon, you might have seen a smart little basket-phaeton flash past, drawn by two glossy frays, and driven by a woman—­a woman with sparkling eyes, a lovely colour, great quantities of soft dark hair, and a figure—­

    ’Helas, mon pere, la taille d’une deesse’—­

a smiling woman, in a wonderful blue-grey toilet, grey driving gloves, and a bold-brimmed grey-felt hat with waving plumes.  And in the man beside her you would have recognised your servant.  You would have thought me in great luck, perhaps you would have envied me.  But—­esse, quam videri!—­I would I were as enviable as I looked.

MERCEDES

When I was a child some one gave me a family of white mice.  I don’t remember how old I was, I think about ten or eleven; but I remember very clearly the day I received them.  It must have been a Thursday, a half-holiday, for I had come home from school rather early in the afternoon.  Alexandre, dear old ruddy round-faced Alexandre, who opened the door for me, smiled in a way that seemed to announce, ’There’s a surprise in store for you, sir.’  Then my mother smiled too, a smile, I thought, of peculiar promise and interest.  After I had kissed her she said, ‘Come into the dining-room.  There’s something you will like.’  Perhaps I concluded it would be something to eat.  Anyhow, all agog with curiosity, I followed her into the dining—­room—­and Alexandre followed me, anxious to take part in the rejoicing.  In the window stood a big cage, enclosing the family of white mice.

I remember it as a very big cage indeed; no doubt I should find it shrunken to quite moderate dimensions if I could see it again.  There were three generations of mice in it:  a fat old couple, the founders of the race, dozing phlegmatically on their laurels in a corner; then a dozen medium-sized, slender mice, trim and youthful-looking, rushing irrelevantly hither and thither, with funny inquisitive little faces; and then a squirming mass of pink things, like caterpillars, that were really infant mice, newborn.  They didn’t remain infants long, though.  In a few days they had put on virile togas of white fur, and were scrambling about the cage and nibbling their food as independently as their elders.  The rapidity with which my mice multiplied and grew to maturity was a constant source of astonishment to me.  It seemed as if every morning I found a new litter of young mice in the cage—­though how they had effected an entrance through the wire gauze that lined it was a hopeless puzzle—­and these would have become responsible, self-supporting mice in no time.