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Read Ebook: Thomas Berthelet Royal Printer and Bookbinder to Henry VIII. King of England by Davenport Cyril Griggs William Photographer
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Ebook has 268 lines and 12940 words, and 6 pages
FACING PAGE
I Had Knocked Him Down on Purpose. He Was Crippled for Life 14
Anything Less Congruous as the Bride-Elect of the Debonair Aristide Pujol it Was Impossible to Imagine 22
Had Straightway Poured His Grievances into a Feminine Ear 32
I Found Both Tyres Had Been Punctured in a Hundred Places 40
"Madame," said Aristide, "You Are Adorable, and I Love You to Distraction" 50
"The Villain Was a Traveller in Buttons--Buttons!" 60
He Burst into Shrieks of Laughter 64
"And You!" shouted Bocardon, Falling on Aristide; "I Must Embrace You Also" 68
Standing on the Arrival Platform of Euston Station 78
"Ah! the Pictures," cried Aristide, with a Wide Sweep of His Arms 88
"I'll Take Five Hundred Pounds," said He, "to Stay in" 96
Between the Folds of a Blanket Peeped the Face of a Sleeping Child 110
He Demonstrated the Proper Application of the Cure 120
It is a Fearsome Thing for a Man to be Left Alone in the Dead of Night with a Young Baby 124
One of the Little Girls in Pigtails Was Holding Him, While Miss Anne Administered the Feeding-Bottle 134
He Must Have Dealt Out Paralyzing Information 180
Fleurette Danced with Aristide, as Light as an Autumn Leaf Tossed by the Wind 188
Aristide Practised His Many Queer Accomplishments 200
He Read It, and Blinked in Amazement 208
He Might as Well Have Pointed Out the Marvels of Kubla Khan's Pleasure-Dome to a Couple of Guinea-Pigs 216
"I've Caught You! At Last, After Twenty Years, I've Caught You" 234
There He Saw a Sight Which for a Moment Paralyzed Him 238
Mr. Ducksmith Seized Him by the Lapels of His Coat 242
THE JOYOUS ADVENTURES OF ARISTIDE PUJOL
#The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol#
THE ADVENTURE OF THE FAIR PATRONNE
In narrating these few episodes in the undulatory, not to say switchback, career of my friend Aristide Pujol, I can pretend to no chronological sequence. Some occurred before he crossed my path for the first time, some afterwards. They have been related to me haphazard at odd times, together with a hundred other incidents, just as a chance tag of association recalled them to his swift and picturesque memory. He would, indeed, make a show of fixing dates by reference to his temporary profession; but so Protean seem to have been his changes of fortune in their number and rapidity that I could never keep count of them or their order. Nor does it matter. The man's life was as disconnected as a pack of cards.
My first meeting with him happened in this wise.
I had been motoring in a listless, solitary fashion about Languedoc. A friend who had stolen a few days from anxious business in order to accompany me from Boulogne through Touraine and Guienne had left me at Toulouse; another friend whom I had arranged to pick up at Avignon on his way from Monte Carlo was unexpectedly delayed. I was therefore condemned to a period of solitude somewhat irksome to a man of a gregarious temperament. At first, for company's sake, I sat in front by my chauffeur, McKeogh. But McKeogh, an atheistical Scotch mechanic with his soul in his cylinders, being as communicative as his own differential, I soon relapsed into the equal loneliness and greater comfort of the back.
In this fashion I left Montpellier one morning on my leisurely eastward journey, deciding to break off from the main road, striking due south, and visit Aigues-Mortes on the way.
At some distance from the gate appeared the usual notice as to speed-limit. McKeogh, most scrupulous of drivers, obeyed. As there was a knot of idlers underneath and beyond the gate he slowed down to a crawl, sounding a patient and monotonous horn. We advanced; the peasant folk cleared the way sullenly and suspiciously. Then, deliberately, an elderly man started to cross the road, and on the sound of the horn stood stock still, with resentful defiance on his weather-beaten face. McKeogh jammed on the brakes. The car halted. But the infinitesimal fraction of a second before it came to a dead stop the wing over the near front wheel touched the elderly person and down he went on the ground. I leaped from the car, to be instantly surrounded by an infuriated crowd, which seemed to gather from all the quarters of the broad, decaying square. The elderly man, helped to his feet by sympathetic hands, shook his knotted fists in my face. He was a dour and ugly peasant, of splendid physique, as hard and discoloured as the walls of Aigues-Mortes; his cunning eyes were as clear as a boy's, his lined, clean-shaven face as rigid as a gargoyle; and the back of his neck, above the low collar of his jersey, showed itself seamed into glazed irregular lozenges, like the hide of a crocodile. He cursed me and my kind healthily in very bad French and apostrophized his friends in Proven?al, who in Proven?al and bad French made responsive clamour. I had knocked him down on purpose. He was crippled for life. Who was I to go tearing through peaceful towns with my execrated locomotive and massacring innocent people? I tried to explain that the fault was his, and that, after all, to judge by the strength of his lungs, no great damage had been inflicted. But no. They would not let it go like that. There were the gendarmes--I looked across the square and saw two gendarmes striding portentously towards the scene--they would see justice done. The law was there to protect poor folk. For a certainty I would not get off easily.
The instant peace was established our rescuer darted up to me with the directness of a dragon-fly and shook me warmly by the hand. As he had done me a service, I responded with a grateful smile; besides, his aspect was peculiarly prepossessing. I guessed him to be about five-and-thirty. He had a clear olive complexion, black moustache and short silky vandyke beard, and the most fascinating, the most humorous, the most mocking, the most astonishingly bright eyes I have ever seen in my life. I murmured a few expressions of thanks, while he prolonged the handshake with the fervour of a long-lost friend.
"It's all right, my dear sir. Don't worry any more," he said in excellent English, but with a French accent curiously tinged with Cockney. "The old gentleman's as sound as a bell--not a bruise on his body." He pushed me gently to the step of the car. "Get in and let me guide you to the only place where you can eat in this accursed town."
Before I could recover from my surprise, he was by my side in the car shouting directions to McKeogh.
"That's one of the few things I've never been," he replied. "No; I'm not a doctor. One of these days I'll tell you all about myself." He spoke as if our sudden acquaintance would ripen into life-long friendship. "There's the hotel--the H?tel Saint-Louis," he pointed to the sign a little way up the narrow, old-world, cobble-paved street we were entering. "Leave it to me; I'll see that they treat you properly."
The car drew up at the doorway. My electric friend leaped out and met the emerging landlady.
"With the very greatest pleasure," said he, without a second's hesitation.
We entered the small, stuffy dining-room, where a dingy waiter, with a dingier smile, showed us to a small table by the window. At the long table in the middle of the room sat the half-dozen frequenters of the house, their napkins tucked under their chins, eating in gloomy silence a dreary meal of the kind my new friend had deprecated.
"What shall we drink?" I asked, regarding with some disfavour the thin red and white wines in the decanters.
As far as eating and drinking went I could not have been in better. Nor could anyone desire a more entertaining chance companion of travel. That he had thrust himself upon me in the most brazen manner and taken complete possession of me there could be no doubt. But it had all been done in the most irresistibly charming manner in the world. One entirely forgot the impudence of the fellow. I have since discovered that he did not lay himself out to be agreeable. The flow of talk and anecdote, the bright laughter that lit up a little joke, making it appear a very brilliant joke indeed, were all spontaneous. He was a man, too, of some cultivation. He knew France thoroughly, England pretty well; he had a discriminating taste in architecture, and waxed poetical over the beauties of Nature.
"It strikes me as odd," said I at last, somewhat ironically, "that so vital a person as yourself should find scope for your energies in this dead-and-alive place."
He threw up his hands. "I live here? I crumble and decay in Aigues-Mortes? For whom do you take me?"
I replied that, not having the pleasure of knowing his name and quality, I could only take him for an enigma.
He selected a card from his letter-case and handed it to me across the table. It bore the legend:--
ARISTIDE PUJOL, Agent. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honor?, Paris.
"That address will always find me," he said.
Civility bade me give him my card, which he put carefully in his letter-case.
"I owe my success in life," said he, "to the fact that I have never lost an opportunity or a visiting-card."
"Where did you learn your perfect English?" I asked.
"First," said he, "among English tourists at Marseilles. Then in England. I was Professor of French at an academy for young ladies."
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