Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. A striped canopy made a canvas tunnel from the doorway to the curb. The house was illuminated brilliantly, and there was the sound of an orchestra playing a love-waltz inside. At the curb a young man of the last elegance was frantically signaling the taxi with his top-hat.

Doubtless because of his preoccupation with other matters, when the pair entered the taxi, the young man neglected to give an address, and when the driver politely pointed out the omission, he exclaimed impatiently, "Oh, the outer boulevards, of course!"

"But what point in the outer boulevards, monsieur?"

"All points, name of God!" shouted the young man, and shut the door, immediately opening it again to add, “And take as long as you like to arrive at them!" Whereupon he slammed it shut to stay.

Now, the ex-conductor of taxis was not unaccustomed to veiled ladies, nor to such commands from the young men who accompanied them. It was not until, after two hours spent in circling the outer boulevards, the young man had parted with the lady at her door in the Avenue Victor Hugo, and was about to enter the taxi again, that there came the first hint that this was no ordinary affair.

"Now you may as well take me home," he said wearily; "not that it matters."

His face was pale, and his voice so hoarse it was a whisper. But the address he gave so stupefied the driver that he did not at first consider those details. It was 69 Rue de Buffon, and that is in a shabby

tumbledown quarter where the walls and bars of the Jardin des Plantes make one think of a prison-yard, and is not an address for a fashionable young man who frequents balls in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and drives about in taxis with ladies from the Avenue Victor Hugo. The driver was still pondering this incongruity when, in that quarter, he opened the door for the young man to descend. Then he had ceased to ponder anything at all. For he had found what he had found.

"I know there is a God," said Ventrillon, hugging his young stomach and beginning at last really to enjoy the warmth and comfort of the food and wine that filled it, “for although it was only Madame Luck who provided my other guests, who but the good God Himself could have sent me Monsieur and Madame de Rigmaraule?”

As Ventrillon prowled restlessly up and down the boulevards the afternoon the good God sent him the Rigmaraules, from every table where sat alone one of those little ladies who sit there alone-though alone no longer than they can help it-her gaze would follow him, at first expectantly, and then regretfully, until he disappeared in the strolling crowds. His eyes, questing hungrily beneath the gay awnings of the cafés, seemed to betray a state of mind which, to them, was interesting to say the least. Also he was young, with the grace of a mythical demigod and the countenance of a Christian archangel; and although those questing eyes had evidently seen too much that was neither mythical nor Christian, they

held for those little ladies a promise of that theoretical something beyond the beyond, toward which their faith still yearned undestroyed by practice. Much practice.

"Besides," said each to herself at the undeniable elegance of his costume, "indubitably he is rich."

But they were wrong, all of them, and on all counts. He had not in all the world a single copper sou, and those hungry eyes of his were seeking only some acquaintance, any acquaintance, whom he might inveigle into buying him a meal. Or at least a bock.

"It is curious," he mused disconsolately, "how, when one's pockets are full, one meets one's acquaintances everywhere; but when they are empty, they have all left town." But such philosophizing does not, as say those practical Americans, buy the baby shoes. Nor had it in all that day bought Ventrillon a meal. Nor even a bock. At last, however, before the Café de la Victoire, he stopped short and repressed a shout of delight.

Among the fashionable idlers on the terrasse of that expensive café sat his old friend, Tric-trac, alone, and slowly consuming-yes, it was a bock! Ventrillon's thirst drew with renewed insistence at his throat. Also on the table before Tric-trac, like a porcelain Tower of Pisa, leaned an incredibly tall stack of saucers from previous bocks. "Fourteen!" counted Ventrillon in excitement. "It is not a poem he has sold but a novel! Fourteen! No, it is a play_"

But that was not all. The moment his eye fell upon Ventrillon, Tric-trac sprang to his feet, and with

his face alight, and both hands outstretched, came running toward him. "Ah, Ventri, my old post!" he cried effusively. "My comrade most dear! And just when I need you most! I am in the most ghastly situation-épouvantable, I assure you! Come and sit down with me and I shall tell you all!"

Ventrillon controlled the avid outburst of joy within his stomach, and accepted the offered seat. "In the meanwhile," he said graciously, "I permit you to offer me a bock."

"A bock!" cried Tric-trac in horror. "No, in the name of God, my calf! It was a bock that ruined me! I had gone all day without food or drink and could find no friend from whom to ask a loan. I could endure my thirst no longer. So I entered here and ordered a bock. Surely at last some friend will pass, I said to myself, and he will pay for it. But no friend passed. For fear that the waiter would demand to be paid, I had to order another. Thus I have drunk fourteen. Regard me my buttons!" He stood upright, and truly, upon his swollen little stomach, his waistcoat buttons were like the buttons in tufted upholstery. "If I leave I shall be arrested. If I stay I burst. Thank God, you have come at last!"

Ventrillon stared and he swore. "And we trouble to maintain a life which is like this! Mon vieux, I haven't a sou! Not a commission in more than two months, and this morning my landlady put me out with nothing but what I could walkoutin."

"But-but," stammered Tric-trac incredulously, "but when I saw you, you looked so-so sacredly p-prosperous!"

"Naturally," said Ventrillon, "I chose to walk out in my best. But all day I have regretted it. I am convinced there was a piece of two sous in the pockets of my old corduroys, and there are places where it would buy me a beer."

Tric-trac's face went greenish white about the corners of his mouth. "Oh, Ventri," he blubbered, full of beer and emotion, "you were my last hope! My landlady put me out this morning t-too!"

He collapsed into his chair, with the result that the Tower of Pisa toppled and fell, its elemental disks shattering into fragments on the pavement. "Oh, my God!" groaned Tric-trac, "now there is breakage to pay as well!”

"Your last hope!" cried Ventrillon, "and you, Tric-trac, were mine! Does that mean nothing to you? As long as there is hope, there is the risk of disappointment. Without hope there is no longer any risk of anything at all. That is why the eyes of pessimists are so gay, while the eyes of optimists are so sad. Waiter! Two bocks! And include these others—and the débris-in my addition!"

"Oh, God!" moaned Tric-trac, "do I have to drink another?"

"My friend," said Ventrillon, "I shall do you the inestimable favor of drinking them both."

"But how will we pay, Ventri? How will we pay?"

"In our present condition of finances, can we not pay as easily for sixteen as for fourteen? We can, in fact, pay as easily for sixteen dinners-"

Upon these significant words from his own mouth Ventrillon stopped

short. Then suddenly he leaned across the table and grasped Trictrac's arm so tightly that he winced.

"Ecoutez, Tric-trac," he said; "if we attempt to leave this place we shall be arrested. If we stay, your capacity for beer has been exhausted, but we can both eat. In fact, we must eat! Then why shall we not order those sixteen dinners?"

"But why sixteen, Ventri?” "Why not? Unless you have a prejudice against even numbers—” "But we cannot eat sixteen!"

"There's no reason why we should eat more than one apiece-unless we so desire. Our guests can eat the others."

"Our guests!"

And

"Yes, my friend. I have always wanted to be present at a dinnerparty where they served champagne and perdrix truffée. For two reasons. I have tasted champagne. I have never tasted perdrix truffée." "Champagne!" gasped Tric-trac. "Perdrix truffée! Oh, Ventri, if only one could! But who would pay? God knows we cannot!"

"Too much beer," said Ventrillon, "renders one stupider than I had supposed. If we cannot pay, who will be left to pay? Obviously those guests!"

Tric-trac gaped. "But we should be arrested!" he objected.

"Then we should have somewhere to spend the night," said Ventrillon. "Yes, at the prefecture of the police!"

"But why should we be arrested? Why cannot something happen at that dinner-party to make it so great a success that they will be glad to pay? In that case we could even take up a collection."

"A collection!" For a moment Tric-trac regarded Ventrillon with unqualified admiration. Then again doubt dragged down the corners of his mouth. "But," he said, "if nothing happens-"

"When I am there," said Ventrillon, "something always happens. And the party I contemplate is one at which it is practically certain to be almost anything. Name of a dog! Look, Tric-trac! What a beautiful woman!"

Tric-trac turned. A tall woman in draperies of mourning purple, with a single scarlet flower beneath her left breast, had descended from a taxi and was sweeping her way in like a goddess toward the terrasse, continually dropping things as she walked. She dropped a bracelet, a lip-stick, a handkerchief, a cigarette-case, a theater program, an embroidered bag, and a small sable choker. A fat little man who followed her like a worshiping lap-dog picked them up. "It is Madame de Rigmaraule," said Tric-trac.

"Ah!" exclaimed Ventrillon. "The beautiful Madame de Rigmaraule!"

To his astonishment, he soon became aware, in spite of the effect she produced, that the hands of the beautiful Madame de Rigmaraule were large, that her ankles were large, that her large-featured face beneath its applied brown and scarlet was that of an ordinary bourgeois housewife, mustache and all, and that her figure, lean and large-boned beneath its somber draperies, bore at important points an undeniable resemblance to that of a marasmic ox. Yet as she made her way in among the tables those draperies flowed with a consciousness of great beauty,

and the consciousness of the consciousness of others of that beauty, and all along the terrasse they whispered reverently: "Look! It is the beautiful Madame de Rigmaraule— the one for whom a man once died!"

She did not, like a female politician, or a successful procuress owning real estate, demand attention. She accepted it, carrying her head as one who must perforce receive deference accorded her for something neither her merit nor her fault.

"Sacred morning!" swore Ventrillon, astounded. "She is not beautiful at all. It is simply that she behaves exactly as if she were. That ought to be ridiculous. I wonder why it is not."

The reason, he decided, was to be found in the sadness written upon her face, the profound tragedy buried in her great sorrowing eyes. "How she must have suffered!" he thought with a pang, and brooded a moment with his eyes fixed upon that weary painted face. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"But why," he said to Tric-trac, "should I waste tears upon the sorrows of others, when we may need them for our own? Besides, we have barely time to invite our guests

"But whom can we invite? It is evident that nobody we know is in town-'

teen in the dining-room of the première! He insists upon champagne and perdrix truffée, but leaves the rest of the menu to our discretion-expenses not to be considered! And an addition of sixteen bocks he and his friend have already drunk to be charged on the addition of the dinner-and the breakage of all the saucers!"

"But is that a thing to excite one's self about?" demanded the proprietor impatiently. "It is not, thank heaven, the first dinner ever ordered in the dining-room of the première-"

"But, monsieur, you have not seen what they are doing! They are sticking pins in the telephone directory for the names of the bureaux of control, and throwing dice for the numbers-in order to telephone invitations to guests of whom they do not even know the names! Monsieur, I think they are both mad."

"No," considered the proprietor. "Sixteen bocks. They're Americans." "But, monsieur, they speak the best French! They know all the gross words!"

"They always learn the gross words first. You will accept the order of these Americans and assure them of the most excellent service."

Ventrillon and Tric-trac were in the cabinet téléphonique. Ventrillon had asked for madame. In every case he asked for madame.

"The wrong number, madame?" he was protesting. "Why must one complicate the designs of God by assigning moral values even to telephone numbers? What is there of good or evil in the courses of the stars or of right or wrong in the arrangement of the universe? Moral values, madame, have been invented

entirely by man, and exist only in his imagination. Let us then accept the wisdom of God and say that no telephone number is the wrong number, especially if it leads to a voice as charming as your own. Ah, if you are afraid to come? . . . But each lady is to invite also an escort.

Anybody you please, madame. Your husband, your fiancé, your— your-let us say, friend-or even, if you like, a sergent de ville. . . . If it is that you do not want to come, why not say the cruel words direct?

Then, why not come? . . But no, madame, it is no joke. You may telephone the management of the café. . . . Ah!" he said, turning to Tric-trac, "there is a woman who understands life. She says she knows she ought not, but she will. Now, two more places to fill-"

Back at their table, Ventrillon threw the dice, while Tric-trac, his eyes tightly closed, thrust his scarfpin at random into the open telephone directory. Tric-trac opened first one eye and then the other. "Elysée," he said.

"Two-six," read Ventrillon from the dice, and then, "five-one."

But Elysée 26-51 was never to be called. For it was at that moment that Ventrillon felt a timorous tug at his sleeve, and looked up to behold a fat little man who stood there flustered, blushing, and stammering "You will pardon my inmessieurs," he said. "I you that I am not in the habit of doing such things—but the lady who is with me insisted-" It Iwas the little man who had accompanied Madame de Rigmaraule.

excuses.

trusion,

assure

"Your wife, monsieur?" inquired Ventrillon comprehendingly.