THE DREAM CIRCEAN
suppleness of youth; and together they ran rapidly down to
the boulevard, where, hailing a fiacre, they jumped in and
clattered down towards the Seine.
Roderic sat well back in the carriage, a little lost in
thought. But the old man sat upright, and peered eagerly
about him. Once he stopped the cab suddenly at a house
with a low railing in front of it, well set back from the street,
jumped out, examined it minutely, and then, with a sigh and
a shake of the head, came back, a little wearier, a little older.
They crossed the Seine, rattled up the Rue Bonaparte, and
stopped at the door of Roderic’s studio.
II
LA RUE DES QUATRE VENTS
“ Ah, well,” said the old man, as he concluded his examina-
tion of the pictures, “what I seek is not here. If it will not
weary you, I will tell you a story. Perhaps, although you
have not painted it, you have seen it. Perhaps—bah! I am
seventy years of age, and a fool to the end.
“Listen, my young friend! I was not always seventy
years of age, and that of which I have to tell you happened
when I was twenty-two.
“In those days I was very rich, and very happy. I had
never loved; I cared for nobody. My parents were both dead
long since. A year of freedom from the control of my good
old guardian, the Duc de Castelnaudary (God rest his soul !),
had left me yet taintless as a flower. I had that chivalrous
devotion to woman which perhaps never really existed at any
time save for rare individuals.
I H 113