contagious nature of his disease. Having received the order to take
him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better
things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.

Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he drenched
it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never been a
farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer. Many a
bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads. The
sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of
all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living
cyclopaedia.

[Illustration: THE WAGON.]

Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes,
learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our
interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than
once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of
his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports.
In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so obese,
that a man's lifetime may be spent in exercising round one of them,
there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to estimate their
relativity, except among the two classes called by the world idlers
and ignorants--the poets and the Bohemians.

Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his account
in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He carried
parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too heavy for
the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a good grace,
and the two mutually aided each other on the errand. Thanks to his