pass; he suspected his partner of some sort of clairvoyance, of some
supernatural power of compelling events, and his admiration for him had
deepened to awe. But into this question he did not permit himself to
enter deeply; he was content to know that fame and prosperity were
returning with a rush to the Grand Hôtel Royal. Already there had been a
score of applicants for rooms; the corridors were again assuming that
air of liveliness and gaiety which had characterised them in those
golden days when the August Prince of Zeit-Zeit had been his annual
guest. He was no longer ashamed to meet the proprietor of the Grand
Hôtel Splendide face to face in the full day; he was a different person
from the despairing individual of the day before; in a word, he was no
longer in ruins! He had been restored, as so many ruins are, by the
hand of an American!

At this moment he held the centre of the stage, and it was easy to read
in his bearing the consciousness that he deserved the limelight. A strip
of crimson carpet had been stretched across the sand to the very water's
edge; on either side of it a dozen decorous footmen were aligned, and
between them Monsieur Pelletan proudly marched, his head in air, his
back very straight, preceding a big, hooded invalid's chair.

Immediately a murmur arose.

"He is ill then!"

"Why the chair?"

"He is coming to take the baths."

The murmur no doubt penetrated to the ears of the little Alsatian, but