minute and tearful directions about Monsieur Paul’s diet, exercise and clothing. He was to see that Monsieur Paul kept regular hours, and was to report in the Rue Clarisse the smallest infraction of the rules of living which might occur in the Rue Bassano; and Pierre promised with a fervor and glibness that would have excited the suspicions of anyone less kindly and simple-minded than good old Mademoiselle. He did indeed awaken a host of doubts in the mind of his faithful Élise, who had not been married for thirty years without finding out a few things about men. And when he wept at telling her good-bye for a single day, she told him not to be shedding any of those crocodile tears around her.

[21]

Pierre, mounted on the van that[22] carried away Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings, drove off, looking as melancholy as he could; but as soon as he turned the corner he began whistling so merrily that the driver asked him if his uncle hadn’t died and left him some money.

[22]

When the Rue Bassano was reached Pierre jumped down and skipped up stairs with the agility of twenty instead of fifty. He was as charmed with Monsieur’s new apartment as Monsieur himself had been. It was so intensely modern. Light everywhere—all sorts of new-fashioned conveniences—nothing in the least like the dismal old Rue Clarisse. And the view from the windows—so very gay! And the noise—so delicious, so intoxicatingly interesting! The sound of rag time music came from the two music halls across the way. Pierre, dropping all pretence of work, was inspired to do the can-can, whistling and singing meanwhile. The open window proved[23] so attractive that Pierre spent a good part of the time hanging out of it, and only by fits and starts got Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings in place. And the more he saw of the place, the more exuberant was his delight with it, and the more determined he was to stay there. The last tenant—the jolly young journalist named Marsac—had left, as Monsieur Bouchard had noted, some souvenirs on the walls in the shape of gaudy posters and brilliant chromos of ballet girls. These, Pierre might be expected to remove when he began to hang on the walls the severely classic pictures that constituted Monsieur Bouchard’s collection of art. But Pierre seemed to know by clairvoyance Monsieur Bouchard’s latent tastes. He hung “The Coliseum by Moonlight”—a very fine etching—immediately under a red-and-gold young lady who was making a quarter past six with her dainty, uplifted toe. “Socrates and His Pupils” were put where they could get[24] an admirable view of another red-and-gold young 

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