The accent of primitive fidelity was perfect. I observed casually, "I
am going on a little journey of thirty-six hours, and alone. You
can pack everything up, and go on to Marly as usual. You may go
to-morrow."

"Shall I not go along with monsieur, then?" repeated Charles, with a
turn for tautology not now for the first time manifested.

"What for? Am I a child?"

"Surely not--on the contrary. But, though Monsieur Paul has a sure
foot and a good eye, and is not to say getting old, yet when a person
is fifty it is not best for a person to run about the streets as if a
person was a young person."

It was Josephine who did me the honor to address me the last remark.

I confess to but forty-five years of age; Hohenfels, quite
erroneously, gives me forty-eight; Josephine, with that raw alacrity
in leaping at computations peculiar to the illiterate, oppressed me
with fifty. Which of us three knew best? I should like to ask. But it
is of little consequence. The Easterns generally vaunt themselves on
not knowing the day of their birth. And wisdom comes to us from the
East.

[Illustration]

I decided, for reasons sufficient to myself, to get out of Paris by
the opposite side. I determined to make my sortie by way of the Temple