too, and to them she said the same thing, and when talk about her refusal was at its busiest, and even among the actors and actresses of the Comédie Française it became one of the chief topics, it was suddenly forgotten for a far more important happening...

For the first time in Heaven knows how many years Gringolard did not come, as usual, to his work.

II

His non-appearance caused a sensation, it is true, that lasted some days in the theater, but, after the first choruses of surprise, when a new dresser had appeared to take his place, it became merely the usual thing to ask Troly every night as he came up the stair: "Eh bien, Troly, any news of Gringolard?" or, "Has Gringolard turned up yet?" The only answer to these questions was a headshake.

To tell the truth, Troly knew as little about Gringolard as any one. It was a strange thing that when he departed from them they found that the old man who had been sharing their nightly lives for years had kept all real knowledge of himself from them. Every one thought that he knew Gringolard: of course they knew him; why, he was " a character," " un drôle de type;" but all they knew was that he was Gringolard. Nothing more. Where he lived, whether he was married, or had children—these were the things touching upon the every-day life of Gringolard of which they were ignorant.

But Troly, with the memory of the old man's talks with him, memories of the loyalty and love with which he spoke of the greater Troly who was dead, took it upon himself to seek out Gringolard. He knew well enough that something very serious must have happened to keep Gringolard away from the theater.

"Oh, perhaps he's tired of work," Lesdain, the tragedian, said to him. "I shouldn't worry myself about him, if I were you, Troly. Depend upon it, the old chap's saved up a nice snug little sum and is all right.”

Troly knew otherwise. Troly knew of Gringolard's patched and shabby coat with its threadbare, shiny elbows, and the red muffler he wore round his neck because he was too poor to buy collars and have them washed. Troly knew the large red fingers that trembled as much from lack of food as from old age, and he had seen them close

tightly round the coins that he had given Gringolard weekly.

Well, whether Gringolard would ever have been found I cannot say, but it so happened about a week after his disappearance that an old woman with a shawl und her head and in a tattered dress clutched Troly by the arm one night as he was leaving the theater, and said, in a voice that was husky with the drinking of many p'tits verres, "Gringolard wants you."

Troly was first overcome with joy to hear the message which meant the end of his search, for he had hunted clue after clue looking for the old man's address; then he remembered with a shock that he was standing in the full glare of a lamp, with this hag plucking at a shoulder-sleeve, in the crowded place of the Comédie Française, where open motor cars bearing people toward the cafés of the Boulevards seemed full of men and women who recognized him with curious eyes.

He pulled the woman into the gloom of the shadows. "Where is Gringolard?" he asked. And who are you?"

A doctor, ma foi! better save up your money for the undertaker. . . . Oh, you're hurting me!" For to silence her ghoulish talk Troly had grasped her wrist fiercely and dragged her towards a cab.

She gave the address, and the cab rolled across the Pont Neuf into the streets of the Latin Quarter. Troly learned on the way that Gringolard owed her three weeks' rent. "He drank," she said, philosophically, “like the rest of us.”

Troly shuddered and wrapped his coat tighter about him,

The woman laughed, and told him that she had spoken to Gringolard of sending him to the hospital. "It would give my house a bad name if he died there," she said. Whereupon Gringolard had begged her not to, and finally he had described Troly's appearance minutely, even to the mole on the side of his

neck, which he had seen so often, standing just behind him, and told her to go to the Comédie and say:

say,' he said to Gringolard

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He said you were she ogled Troly

"Gringolard wants you." "That's all you need me," the woman repeated. wants you." He'll come.' a generous gentleman," and with a terrible leer, so that he gave her a fivefranc piece rather than see her grimace at him any more.

"How long has Gringolard lived with you?" he demanded.

"Oh la la! more years than one can remember. He was there when my mother died. Always in one little room. . . the garret. Ah! here we are."

The cab drew up outside a ramshackle house. They passed through a courtyard, and then through two more, and with each courtyard the buildings surrounding it grew more ramshackle and dismal, until at last the woman led the way to a desolate doorway, up flights of winding wooden stairs, to a door which opened out on a little room.

"There he is," she said, and Troly saw him. . . . Ce pauvre Gringolard! The cracked ceiling sloped down to a little window which could never have been built to admit daylight, it was so small; and the walls of the room were bare, and clammy with the damp. A stained and rickety table stood by the window, with a chair leaning against the wall for support, since it could not stand alone on only three legs. Through the half-open cupboard Troly caught a glimpse of half a loaf of bread, a few tins, and a chipped cup and saucer; he saw a medicine bottle on a small table by the bedside, and by it a photograph frame, and in the midst of all this picture of poverty-Gringolard!

Troly went forward to the bed, with its tattered clothes hiding the thin form of the old man, to gaze upon the face that rested on the pillow.

"Eh bien! Gringolard," he said, gently, bending over him, "you will be better soon."

Gringolard smiled. His eyes told Troly that he wanted him to sit down. Troly, fearing the three-legged chair, took a seat on the bed. Gringolard coughed badly.

Ce pauvre Gringolard! Troly shuddered. To die in these unlovely surroundings, without a glimpse of the sun through the little window in this sordid room, with only a squalid woman to shut his staring eyes when all was done! It was too horrible to contemplate, and it should not be.

He called the woman and bade her fetch a doctor, and while she was gone Gringolard closed his eyes and murmured, "JeanneMarie."

At first Troly thought the old man was calling on some saint, but gradually out of the wandering, scattered phrases that followed he pieced together the fact that he was talking of some woman he had once known. "Jeanne-Marie," murmured Gringolard, "your hair was fair and your eyes were wonderfully blue . . . one, two, one, two-that's the way, Jeanne-Marie.

He said that over and over again. "One, two . . . one, two." And Troly pondered the meaning. The words were a riddle to him, until he suddenly saw the solution. Gringolard was speaking of his daughter: he saw her a baby again, and he was teaching her to walk. "Jeanne-Marie . . . you must not be late, and I hope you'll earn another prize." Ah! she was grown a little now, in the old man's mind. She was a little school-girl, and he was bidding her good-by. And then, later, "Jeanne-Marie, you are very beautiful . . . do not leave me. . . .” And, last of all, with a voice that quivered with sobs, "She will come back . . . she is sure to come back." Then Troly knew Gringolard's secret, and saw the human father behind the withered figure of the old man who had only dressed comedians for the play all his lifetime.

He

And just then the doctor came into the room. Troly told him about Gringolard, and the young doctor went to the bedside. shook his head, and in that head-shake Troly read the condemnation of the old man to death.

"But, doctor," said Troly, "we must take him away from this . . ."-describing with an expressive head the terrible poverty of the garret with its wretched trappings. "How can a man die in such surroundings?"

"Alas!" said the doctor, it would be dangerous to move him. It is only a question of a few days. He will linger on, and then one day his eyes will see no more. Perhaps a priest could give him comfort."

Thereupon Troly set himself the task of

lightening the gloom of the few days of life that remained to Gringolard. He went away that night, promising the woman what was untold wealth to her if she would attend to every want of the dying man. And in the morning he came with his arms full of flowers and pockets that bulged with delicacies to tempt the sufferer's appetite. He told the

others at the theater of Gringolard's plight, and there came a procession of them (for the hearts of the actors are among the largest in the world), smoothing his pillows, bringing him dainties, and generally making a fuss over him. Even La Grande Marianne called on him. "She does not forget her old

friends," said Gringolard.

But often Gringoiard turned his face impatiently to the wall, and called aloud, in a voice cracked with fits of coughing, for "Jeanne-Marie." When they were alone, Troly drew the story of his daughter from him. There is no need to repeat it here; it is enough to say that she was the idol whom Gringolard worshiped; and the odd thing about it was that, though she must have been by this time a woman nearing sixty, if she were not dead, in Gringolard's imagination she was no older than eighteen. "Wonderful fair hair and blue eyes, M'sieu Troly," he murmured. "Little curls that fell over her forehead and fluttered about her temples like leaves in the autumn when she shook her head impetuously."

She must have been very beautiful in her day, this daughter of Gringolard, thought Troly, who, by listening to the descriptions which the old man was constantly repeating, seemed to know her every feature and all her pretty ways; yes, even the silver music of her laugh, "Like the bell that chimes in the evening over the river at Pont-Latour," said Gringolard.

Then the old man became petulant and whimpered for his daughter in a way that made the heart of Troly tighten its strings with sorrow for him. His one wish was to see his daughter again. The desire became so magnified that nothing else mattered; it was the only thing that held the balance between life and death. Once he had seen her, let the scales drop, for all he cared. . . .

Troly sat through very many pitiful hours. And every now and again the doctor called and shook his head. There was nothing that he could do.

"It is a pity," he said, "that one cannot find his daughter."

"Of what avail," asked Troly, "since she would be a withered old woman, and he thinks of her as the laughing girl of eighteen?"

"Well," said the doctor, who was frankly a materialist and had as little time for sentimental business as most doctors have, "I expect it will be all over to-morrow."

When the morning came, and brought Troly with it, he found the old man, with a singularly peaceful face, awaiting him. His fading eyes were calm, and the lines about his lips gave an expression of serenity to his mouth. Troly wondered what could have happened. Undoubtedly some great happiness had cast a glow over the dingy room.

He wondered whether this was the rosy reflection of the future when all pain would be stilled. Gringolard solved the problem himself for Troly.

"Jeanne-Marie came yesterday," he said

quietly.

"Ce pauvre Gringolard!... Delirium," thought Troly. He imagined that the old man had brooded so long on the image of his daughter that his weakening brain had woven a phantasm of her.

"She came yesterday, after you had gone, M'sieu Troly . . . through the door, over there. I thought I was dreaming, my faith!

66

we

She shook her little curls at me and laughed wickedly, just as she used to do when she meant to have her own way. "Oh," and he shook his head slyly, had quite a long talk, all about her mother and herself, and Jacques . . . he was the fellow she was engaged to. She told me she was quite happy, and they married, after all. What an old fool I was, to be sure I thought... hee! hee! how foolish I was, M'sieu Troly! I thought she wouldn't have him, and that she had run away to Paris with that other man, but I was quite wrong. Why, she said that she was going to have a baby. What do you think of that, M'sieu Troly? Gringolard will be a grandfather soon."

Troly scarcely knew what to think of it. The old man rambled on with his pathetic delusions, and he listened, amazed, at the touch of actuality which Gringolard infused into his visions. There was one good thing about it he showed marked improvement, and he cried no longer for Jeanne Marie.

The doctor was also surprised. If this goes on," he said, "we shall be able to remove him."

It did go on. For the next two days Troly