"_Tu sais_, Asticot, I can wash the Master's s.h.i.+rts and mend his clothes. I can also make his coffee in the morning."

Her eyes had a far-away look. She was living in the land of day dreams even as I had been.

"I always prepare the Master's breakfast," said I jealously.

"It is the woman's duty."

"I don't care," I retorted.

She unclasped her hands, and coming forward on to her knees and bending over me, brushed a strand of hair from my forehead.

"I will prepare yours too, Asticot," she said gently, "and you will see how nice that will be. Men can't do these things where there is a woman to look after them. It is not proper."

So, flattered in my masculinity, being ranked with Paragot as a "man," I took a sultanesque view of the situation and graciously consented to her proposed ministrations.

Paragot came back triumphant from Aix-les-Bains. Hadn't he told me he had been inspired to go there? The man who played the violin at the open-air Restaurant by the Lac de Bourget had just that day fallen ill.

The result, a week's engagement for Blanquette and himself.

"But, my child," said he, "you will have to suffer an inharmonious son of Satan who makes a discordant Hades out of an execrable piano. He had the impudence to tell me that he came from the Conservatoire. He, with as much ear for music as an organ-grinder's monkey! He said to me--Paragot--that I played the violin not too badly! I foresee a hideous doom overhanging that young man, my children. Before the week is out I will throw him into the maw of his soul-devouring piano. Ha! my children, give me to drink, for I am thirsty."

Mindful of my dignity as a man, I glanced at Blanquette, who went into the cafe obediently, while I stayed with my master. It was a sweet moment. Paragot gripped me by the shoulder.

"My son, while Blanquette and I work, which Carlyle says is the n.o.blest function of man, but concerning which I have my own ideas, you cannot live in red-s.h.i.+rted, pomaded and otherwise picturesque and studious laziness. Look," he cried, pointing to a round, flat object wrapped in paper which he had brought with him. "Do you know what that is?"

"That," said I, "is a cake."

"It is a tambourine," said my master.

The next day found us in the garden of the little lake-side restaurant at Aix-les-Bains playing at lunch time. The young man at the piano whom I had expected to see a fiend in human shape was a harmless consumptive fellow who played with the sweet patience of a musical box. He shook hands with me and called me "_cher collegue_," and before nightfall told me of a disastrous love-story in consequence of which, were it not for his mother, he would drown himself in the lake. He effaced himself before Paragot much as the bellows-blower does before the organist. His politeness to Blanquette would have put to the blush any young man at the Bon Marche or the Louvre. His name was Laripet.

I was ordered to make modest use of my tambourine until sufficient instruction from Paragot should authorise him to let me loose with it; I was merely to add to the picturesqueness of the group on the platform, and at intervals to go the round of the guests collecting money. I liked this, for I could then jingle the tambourine without fear of reproof.

You have no idea what an ordeal it is for a boy to have a tambourine which he must not jingle. But the shady charm of the garden compensated for the repression of noisy instincts. After months of tramping in the broiling sun, free and perfect as it was, the easy loafing life seemed sweet. We went little into the gay town itself. For my part I did not like it. Aix-les-Bains consisted of a vast Enchanted Garden set in a valley, great mountains hemming it round. Skirting the Enchanted Garden were shady streets and mysterious palaces, some having gardens of their own of a secondary enchantment, and shops where jewels and perfumes and white ties and flowers and other objects of strange luxury were exhibited in the windows. But these took the humble place of mere accessories to the Enchanted Garden, jealously guarded against Asticot by great high gilded railings and by blue-coated, silver-b.u.t.toned functionaries at the gates. Within rose two Wonder Houses gorgeous with dome and pinnacle, bewildering with gold and snow, displaying before the aching sight the long cool stretch of verandahs, and offering the baffling glimpse of vast interiors whence floated the dim sound of music and laughter; and bright, happy beings, in wondrous raiment, wandered in and out unchallenged, unconcerned, as if the Wonder Houses were their birthright.

I, a shabby, penniless little Peri, stood at the gilded gates disconsolate. I didn't like it. The mystery of the unknown beat.i.tude within the Wonder Houses oppressed me to faintness. _It was unimaginable._ Through the leaves of a tree I could see the pale Queen Galeswinthe; but through those gay enchanting walls I could see nothing.

They baulked my soul. When I tried to explain my feelings to Paragot he looked at me in his kind, sad way and shook his head.

"My wonder-headed little Asticot," said he, "within those gewgaw Wonder Houses----" Then he stopped abruptly and waved me away, "No. It's a devilish good thing for you to have something your imagination boggles at. Stick to the Ideal, my son, and hug the Unexplained. The people who have solved the Riddle of the Universe at fifteen are bowled over by the Enigma of their cook at fifty. Plug your life as full as it can hold with fantasy and fairy-tale, and thank G.o.d that your soul is baulked by the Mysteries of the Casinos of Aix-les-Bains."

"But what do they do there, Master?" I persisted.

"The men wors.h.i.+p strange G.o.ddesses and the women run after false G.o.ds, and all practice fascinating idolatries."

I did not in the least know what he meant, which was what he intended.

When I consulted Blanquette one morning, as she and I alone were sauntering down the long shady avenue which connects the town with the little-port of the lake, she said that people went into the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs, the two Wonder Houses aforesaid, merely to gamble.

I pooh-poohed the notion.

"The Master says they are Temples of great strange G.o.ds, where people wors.h.i.+p."

"G.o.ds! What an idea! _Il n'y a que le bon Dieu_," quoth Blanquette.

"You have evidently not heard of the G.o.ds of Greece and Rome, Jupiter and Apollo and Venus and Bacchus."

"_Ah, tiens_," said Blanquette. "I have heard Italians swear 'Corpo di Bacco.' That is why?"

"Of course," said I in my grandest manner, "and there are heaps of other G.o.ds besides."

"All the same," she objected, "I always thought the Italians were good Catholics."

"So they may be," said I, "but that doesn't prove that there are not beautiful G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses and idols and shrines in the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs."

As this was unanswerable Blanquette diverted the conversation to the less transcendental topic of the premature baldness of Monsieur Laripet.

If the doings of the bright happy beings were hidden from me while they wors.h.i.+pped in the Casinos, I at least met them at close quarters in the garden of the Restaurant du Lac. In some respects this garden resembled that of the Restaurant du Soleil at Chambery. There was a verandah round the restaurant itself, there were trees in joyous leaf.a.ge, there were little tables, and there were waiters hurrying to and fro with napkins under their arms. But that was all the resemblance. Our little platform stood against the railings separating the garden from the quay. Behind us s.h.i.+mmered the blue lake, great mountains rising behind; away on the right, embosomed in the green mountainside, flashed the white Chateau de Hautecombe. Always in mid-lake a tiny paddle-steamer churned up a wake of white foam. On the quay itself stood an enchanting little box--a _camera obscura_--to which I as a fellow artist was given the _entree_ by the proprietor, and in which one could see heavenly pictures of the surrounding landscape; there were also idle cabs with white awnings, and fezzed Turks perspiring under furs and rugs which they hawked for sale.

In front of us, within the garden, a joyous crowd of the radiantly raimented laughed over dainty food set on snowy cloths. Here and there a lobster struck a note of colour, or a ray of sunlight striking through the red or gold translucencies of wine in a gla.s.s: which distracted my attention from my orchestral duties and caused an absent-minded jingle of my tambourine.

What I loved most was to make my round among the tables and mingle closely with the wors.h.i.+ppers. Of the men, clean and correct in their perfectly fitting flannels, sometimes stern, sometimes mocking, sometimes pettishly cross, I was rather shy; but I was quite at my ease with the women, even with those whose many rings and jewels, violent perfumes and daring effects of dress made me instinctively differentiate from their quieter and less bejewelled sisters. Blanquette laughingly called me a "_pet.i.t polisson_" and said that I made soft eyes at them.

Perhaps I did. When one is a hundred and fifty it is hard to realise that one's little scarecrow boy's eyes may have touched the hearts of women. But the appeal of the outstretched tambourine was rarely refused.

"Get out of this," the man would say.

"But no. Remain. _Il a l'air si drole_--what is your name?"

"_Je m'appelle Asticot, Madame, a votre service._"

This always amused the lady. She would search through an invariably empty purse.

"Give him fifty centimes."

And the man would throw a silver piece into the tambourine.

Once I was in luck. The lady found a ten-franc piece in her purse.

"That is all I have."

"I have no change," growled the man.

"If I give you this," said the lady, "what would you do with it?"

"If Madame would tell me where to get it, I would buy a photograph of Madame," said I, with one of Paragot's "inspirations"; for she was very pretty.

"_Voila_," she laughed putting the gold into my hand. "_Tu me fais la cour, maintenant._ Come and see me at the Villa Marcelle and I will give you a photograph gratis."

But Paragot when I repeated the conversation to him called the lady shocking names, and forbade me to go within a mile of the Villa Marcelle. So I did not get the photograph.