He lifted his little arms in benediction.  The situation was cruelly comical.  For a moment I hated the mournful-visaged, posturing monkey, and had a wild desire to throw him out of the window and have done with him.  I rose and, towering over him, was about to lecture him severely on his impertinent interference, when the sight of his scared face made me turn away with a laugh.  What would be the use of reproaching him?  He would only sit down on the floor and weep.  So I paced the room, while he followed me with his eyes like an uncertain spaniel.

“Look here, Professor,” said I at last.  “Now that you’ve found Captain Vauvenarde, brought Madame Brandt and him together, and told me that she is in love with me, don’t you think you’ve done enough?  Don’t you think your cats need your attention?  Something terrible may be happening to them.  I dreamed last night,” I added with desperate mendacity, “that they were turned into woolly lambs.”

“Monsieur,” said the dwarf loftily, “my duty is here.  And I care not whether my cats are turned into the angels of Paradise.”

I groaned.  “You are wasting a great deal of money over this affair,” I urged.

“What is money to my gigantic combinations?”

“Tell me,” I cried with considerable impatience.  “What are your confounded combinations?”

He began to tremble violently.  “I would rather die,” said he, “than betray my secret.”

“It’s all some silly nonsense about that wretched horse!” I exclaimed.

He covered his ears with his hands.  “Blasphemy!  Blasphemy!  Don’t utter it!”

In another moment he was cowering on his knees before me.

“You, of all men, mustn’t blaspheme.  You whom I love like my master.  You whom the divine lady loves.  I can’t bear it!” He continued to gibber unintelligibly.

He was stark mad.  There was no question of it.  For a moment I stood irresolute.  Then I lifted him to his feet and patted his head soothingly.

“Never mind,” said I.  “I was wrong.  It was a beautiful horse.  There never was such a horse in the world.  If I had a picture of him I would hang it up on the wall over my bed.”

“Would you?” he cried joyfully.  “Then I will give you one.”

He trotted over to the bundle of papers that reposed in his hat on the floor, searched through them, and to my dismay handed me a faded, unmounted, and rather torn and crumpled photograph of the wonderful horse.

“There!” said he.

“I could not rob you of it,” I protested.

“It will be my joy to know that you have it—­that it is hanging over your bed.  See—­have you a pin?  I myself will fix it for you.”

While he was searching my table for pins the chasseur of the hotel came with a message from Madame Brandt.  Would Monsieur come at once to Madame in her private room?

“I’ll come now,” I said.  “Professor, you must excuse me.”