much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not how
to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting her to
resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter seemed
like losing existence itself.

One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord
to resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were
his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards and a
gypsy's inventiveness.

Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several years,
lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the roads,
circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris, and
carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their utensils,
their bed, their oven, their all.

From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of barter.
At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of the house
kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a ditch. The
hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their sultan prudently
pecked about for food. At the first appeal they re-entered their cage.

[Illustration: FRANCINE.]

At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a most
piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye,
lame and wild. For devotion and good sense his match could be found
nowhere. Like his horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his