"The girl whose eyes suggested the story to me is called on the
programmes 'Florozonde.' For the rest, I know nothing, except that thou
didst offer a dinner and I was hungry."

However, when he had written this, he destroyed it.

"Though I am unappreciated myself, and shall probably conclude in the
Morgue," he mused, "that is no excuse for my withholding prosperity
from others. Doubtless the poor girl would rejoice to appear at three
variety theatres of the first class, or even at one of them." He
answered simply:

"Her name is 'Florozonde'; she will be found in a circus at Chartres"--
and nearly suffocated with laughter.

Then a little later the papers announced that Mlle. Florozonde--whose
love by a strange series of coincidences had always proved fatal--would
be seen at La Coupole. Posters bearing the name of "Florozonde"--yellow
on black--invaded the boulevards. Her portrait caused crowds to
assemble, and "That girl who, they say, deals death, that Florozonde!"
was to be heard as constantly as ragtime.

By now Pitou was at the Hague, his necessities having driven him into
the employment of a Parisian who had opened a shop there for the sale
of music and French pianos. When he read the Paris papers, Pitou
trembled so violently that the onlookers thought he must have ague.
Hilarity struggled with envy in his breast. "Ma foi!" he would say to
himself, "it seems that my destiny is to create successes for others.
Here am I, exiled, and condemned to play cadenzas all day in a piano