swallowed him up.  One morning—­it was in the beginning of December and the cold was biting—­I arrived at the office and found that his chair-bed which stood in the antechamber had not been slept in; in fact that it had not been made up overnight.  In the cupboard I found the remnants of an onion pie, half a sausage, and a quarter of a litre of wine, which proved conclusively that he had not been in to supper.

At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind.  I had found out quite recently that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own somewhere behind the fish-market, together with an old and wholly disreputable mother who plied him with drink whenever he spent an evening with her and either he or she had a franc in their pocket.  Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his family he usually returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.

I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late afternoon, not having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my steps toward the house behind the fish-market where lived the mother of that ungrateful wretch.

The woman’s surprise when I inquired after her precious son was undoubtedly genuine.  Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly were not.  She reeked of alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited was indescribably filthy.  I offered her half a franc if she gave me authentic news of Theodore, knowing well that for that sum she would have sold him to the devil.  But very obviously she knew nothing of his whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of her abode from my heels.

I had become vaguely anxious.

I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and if I should miss him very much.

I did not think that I would.

Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore.  In his own stupid way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not possessed of anything worth stealing.  I myself was not over-fond of the man—­but I should not have bothered to murder him.

Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night thinking of the wretch.  When the following morning I arrived at my office and still could see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of putting the law in motion on his behalf.

Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of such an insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.

I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory ring at the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so.  It meant giving a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of onion pie or of cheap claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it meant my going, myself, to open the door to my impatient visitor.

I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed.  I had seen many beautiful women in my day—­great ladies of the Court, brilliant ladies of the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire—­but never in my life had I seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the one which now sailed through the antechamber of my humble abode.