days, I once had a famous dinner; and naturally, returning, I must try
to duplicate it, even though it meant going on to Millau in the rain.
But alas! the Café de l'Univers is no more what it was--or I am grown
over critical."

What now of Duchemin's doubts? To tell the sad truth, they were just as
strong as ever. The man was somehow prejudiced: he found Monk's story
entirely too glib, and knew a mean sense of gratification when the curé
interposed a gentle correction.

"But in Ninety-four, monsieur, there was no Café de l'Univers in Nant."

Astonished eyebrows climbed the forehead of Mr. Monk.

"No, monsieur le curé? Truly not? Then it must have been another. How
one's memory will play one false!"

"How strange, then, is coincidence," Madame de Sévénié suggested. "You
who made a walking tour of this country so long ago, monsieur, regard
there that good Monsieur Duchemin, himself engaged upon just such an
undertaking."

Duchemin acknowledged with a humorous little nod Mr. Monk's look of
moderate amazement at this so strange coincidence.

"A whim of my age, monsieur," he said--"a project I have entertained
since youth but always, till of late, lacked leisure to put into
execution."

"But is there anything more wonderful than the workings of the good