“The Guest of Quesnay”’ tells 
the stery of a pure woman’s love 
and sacrifice for a debased, 
misled, pleasure loving man; it 
tells in captivating vein of pic- 
turesque Paris, too — of the cos- 
mopolitan life of the famous 
capital. Its character sketches 
of continental society as well as 
peasantry are unmistakable in 
their piciuring, and its romance, 
its mystery and its refreshing 
comedy give the same qualities 
to the novel that placed the 
author’s ““Monsieur Beaucaire”’ 
among the masterpieces of con- 
temporaneous fiction. 
CHAPTER I. 
HERE are old Parisians who 
will tell you pompously that 
the boulevards, like the polit- 
ical cafes, have ceased to ex- 
ist, but this means only that the boule- 
vards ro longer gossip of Louis Napo- 
leon, the return of the Bourbons or of 
General Boulanger, for these highways 
are always too busily stirring with 
present movements not te be forgetful 
of their yesterdays. In the shade of 
the buildings and awnings the loun- 
gers, the lookers-or in Paris, the audi- 
ence of the boulevard, sit at little ta- 
bles, sipping coffee from long glasses, 
drinking absinth or hright colored 
sirups and gazing over the heads of 
throngs afoot at others borne alcng 
through the sunshine of the street in 
carriages, in cabs, in glittering auto- 
mobiles or high on the tops of omni- 
buses. 
From all the continents the multi- 
tudes come to join in that procession— 
Americans tagged with race cards and 
intending hilarious disturbances, puz- 
zied Americans worn with guidebook 
plodding, Chinese princes in silk, queer 
Antillean dandies of swarthy origin 
and fortune, ruddy English thinking of 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Tarkington 
Copyright, 1908, by the McClure Company 
Copyright, 1907, 1908, by the Ridgway Company 
pallid English with 
teeth bared and eyes hungrily search- - 
ing for signboards of tea rooms, over- 
nothing, upper 
Europeanized Japanese =anpleasantly 
immaculate, burnoosed sheiks from the 
desert and red fezzed Semitic ped@lers, 
Italian nobles in English tweeds, Su- 
danese negroes swaggering in frock 
coats, slim Spaniards, squat Turks, 
travelers, idlers, exiles, fugitives, 
sportsmen. All the tribes and kinds of 
men are tributary here to the Parisian 
stream, which on a fair day in spring 
already cverfiows the banks with its 
own much mingled waters—soberly 
clad burgesses, bearded, amiable and 
in no fatal hurry; well kept men of 
the world swirling by in miraculous 
limousines, legless cripples flopping on 
hands and leather pads, thin whiskered 
students in velveteen, walrus mustach- 
ed veterans in broadcloths, keen faced 
old prelates, shabby young priests, 
cavalrymen in casque and cuirass, 
workingmen turned horse and harness: 
ed to carts, sidewalk jesters, itinerant 
venders of questionable wares, shady 
loafers dressed to resemble gold show- 
ering America, motor cyclists in leath- 
er, hairy musicians, blue gendarmes, 
baggy red zouaves, purple faced, glazed 
hatted, scarlet waistcoated, cigarette 
smoking cabmen, calling one another 
“onions,” “camels” and names even 
more terrible. Women are prevalent 
over all the concourse—fair women, 
dark women, pretty women, gilded wom- 
en, haughty women, indifferent women, 
friendly women, merry women, fine 
women in fine clothes, rich women in 
fine clothes, poor women in fine clothes, 
worldly old women reclining befurred 
in electric landaulets, wordy old wom. 
en hoidenishly trundling carts full 
of flowers, wonderful automobile wom- 
en, quick glimpsed, in multiple veils of 
white and brown and sea* green; wom- 
en in rags and tags and women drap- 
ed, coifed and befrilled in the deliri- 
um of maddened poet-milliners and 
the hasheesh dreams of ladies’ tai- 
lors. 
So if you sit at the little tables often 
enough—that is, if you become an am- 
ateur boulevardier—you begin to rec- 
ognize the transient stars of the pag- 
eant, those to whom thé boulevar@ al- 
lows a dubious and fugitive role of 
celebrity and whom it greets with a 
slight flutter, the turning of heads, a 
murmur of comment and the incredu- 
lous boulevard smile, which seems to 
Bay: “You see—madame and monsieur 
passing there. Evidently they think 
we still believe in them.” 
This flutter heralded and followed 
the passing of a white touring car 
with the procession one afternoon just 
before the Grand Prix, though it need- 
ed no boulevard celebrity to make the 
man who lolled in the tonneau conspic- 
uous. Simply for that, notoriety was 
superfluous; so were the remarkable 
size and power of his car; so was the 
elaborate touring costume of flannels 
and pongee he wore; so was even the 
enameled presence of the dancer who 
sat beside him. His face would have 
fone it without accessories, 
My old friend George Ward and I 
had met for our aperitif at the Terrace 
Larue, by’ the Madeleine, when the 
white automobile came snaking its 
way craftily through the traffic. Turn- 
ing in to pass a victoria on the wrong 
side, it was forced down to a snail’s 
- pace near the curb and not far from 
our table, where it paused, checked by 
a blockade at the next corner. I heard 
Ward utter a half suppressed guttural 
of what I took to be amazement, and I 
did not wonder. 
The face of the man in the tonneau 
detzched him to the: spectator’s gaze 
and singled him out of the concourse 
-with an effect almost ludicrous in its 
incongruity. The hair was dark, lus- 
trous and thick, the forehead broad 
and finely modeled and certain other 
ruinous vestiges of youth and good 
looks remained, but whatever the fea- 
tures might once have shown of. hon- 
or, worth or kindly semblance had dis- 
appeared beyond all tracing in a blur- 
red distortion. The lids of one eye 
were discolored and swollen almost to- 
gether. Other traces of a recent bat- 
tering were not lacking, nor was cos- 
metic evidence of a hervic struggle on 
the part of some valet of infinite pains 
to efface them. The nose lost: outline 
in the discolorations of the puffed 
cheeks. The chin, tufted with a small 
imperial, trembled beneath a sagging 
gray lip. 
The figure was fat, tut loose and 
sprawling, seemingly without the will 
to hold itself together. In truth, the 
_ man appeared to be almost in a semi- 
stupor, and, contrasted with this pow- 
dered Silenus, even the woman beside 
him gained something of human dig- 
nity. At least, she was thoroughly 
alive, bold, predatory and, in spite of 
the gross embonpoint that threatened 
her, still savagely graceful. A purple 
veil dotted with gold floated about her 
hat, from which green dyed ostrich 
plumes cascaded down across a cheek 
enameled dead white. Her hair was 
plastered in blue-black waves, parted 
low on the forehead. Her lips were 
splashed a startling carmine, the eye- — 
lids painted blue, and from between 
lashagggyttie spikes of 
blackiggmer. companion 
With agmpssly simulated 
tenderqmppo Vividly sug- 
eestinamgculations of a 
200k en bearer the 
kitcheg 
“Whe staring at the 
man igggmd not turning 
toward 
“qf bella Mariana 
2 Murggpnswered—“‘one 
of thoggjcome to Paris 
from mm themselves 
on theme great famous 
1 dancer who 
Mariana did 
and ig 
flied ; 
oy 
She danced at 
Ge a 
’ I said grate- 
point’ out’ the 
' tower to me 
in Mariana.” ,” 
D 2 
tnd in surprise. 
th her,’ I said. 
equaintanee.” 
curthy} ‘patised . 
and ith very little 
mirth he continted, 
“and ($@tance with Him 
—yes, + 
ing his# way. a way so 
uded in his' Deeg 
mine “by’ wer 
arman.’”: 
lewhat: frmittar. 
M newspapers 
was: fairly out 
‘generated into 
ROG 
Saag ad 
“application for 
“his “companions 
bella Mariana ; 
r. She's gone, ; 
than all the - 
as so voumone 
- and called Harman’s, attention 
ulevard knéws © 
brawl and debauch. What had been 
scrapes for the boy became scandals 
for the man, and he gathered a more 
and more unsavory reputation until its 
like was not to be found outside a 
penitentiary. The crux of his career 
in his own country was reached during 
_a midnight quarrel in Chicago, when be 
shet a negro gambler. Harman’s wife 
left him, and the papers recorded her 
a divorce. She was 
George 'Ward’s second cousin, the 
daughter of a Baltimore clergyman; a 
belle in a season and town of belles 
and a delightful headstrong creature 
fron all accounts. She had made a 
runaway inateh of it with Harman 
three years before, their affair having 
been earnestly op»osed by all her rela- 
tives, especially by poor George, who 
tame over to Paris just after the wed- 
ding in a miserable frame of mind. 
Harman next began a trip round the 
world. with,an orgy which continued 
from San I*rancisco to Bangkok, where, 
in the company of some congenial fel- 
low travelers, he interfered in a native 
ceremonial with the result that one of 
was drowned. In 
Rothe: he -was rescued with difficulty 
froma .street mob that unreasonably 
_refused .to accept intoxication as an 
excuse, for his riding down a child on 
his, way to the hunt. Later we had 
been hearing from Monte Carlo of his 
disastrous plunges at roulette. 
I still take three home newspapers, 
‘trying to follow the people I knew and 
.) the things that happen, and the ubiqui- 
» ty.of so..worthless a creature as Larra- 
‘bee Harman in the columns I dredged 
for real news had long been a point of 
irritation to this present exile. Not 
only that. He had usurped space in 
the eontin:ntal papers, and of late my 
favorite Parisian journal had served 
_ ,him to me with my morning coffee, 
~ only hinting his 
‘him with that gracious satire charac- 
name, but offering 
teristic of the Gallic journalist writing 
of anything American. And so this 
grotesque wreck of a man was well 
known 
to the boulevard—one of its 
sights. That was to be perceived by 
the flutter he caused, by the turning 
of heads in his direction and the low 
laughter of the people at the little ta- 
bles: 
had risen to their feet. 
Some one behind us chuckled aloud, 
“They say Mariana beats him.” 
“Eyidently!” 
The dancer was aware of the flutter 
to it 
with’ 2 touch upon bis arm and a laugh 
and a nod of -her violent plumage. 
At that he seemed to rouse himself 
somewhat. His head rolled heavily 
over upon.his shoulder, the lids lifted 
-a little from the red shot eyes, show- 
ine. a strange pride when his gaze fell 
<3 upon the many staring faces. 
_ Ward pulled my sleeve. 
“Come,” he said, “let us go over to 
the’ Luxembourg gardeus where the air 
‘is éleaner: * 
afd ‘is a portrait ‘painter, and in 
the matter of vogue there seem to be 
no pinnacles left for him to surmount. 
Three or four in the rear ranks 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE. 
He has painted most of the very 
rich women of fashion who have come 
to Paris of late years, and he has be- 
come so prosperous, has such a polite 
celebrity and his opinions upon art 
are so conclusively quoted that the 
friendship of some of us who started 
with him has been dangerously strain- 
ed. 
His sister, Miss Elizabeth, looks after 
him now. She came with him when 
he returned to Paris after his disap- 
pointment in the unfortunate Harman 
affair, and she took charge of all his 
business as well as his social arrange- 
ments (she has been accused ¢f a 
theory that the two things may be 
happily combined), making him lease 
a house in an expensively modish 
quarter near the Avenue du Bois de 
Boulogne. Miss Elizabeth is an in- 
stinctively fashionable woman, prac- 
tical withal, and to her mind success 
should be not only respectable, but 
“smart.” 
It was George’s habit to come often 
to see me. He always really liked the 
sort of society his sister had brought 
about him, but now and then there 
were intervals when it wore on him a 
little, I think. Sometimes he came for 
me in his automobile, and we would 
make a mild excursion to breakfast 
in the country, and that is what hap- 
pened one morning about three weeks 
after the day when we had sought 
pure air in the Luxembourg gardens. 
We drove out through the Bois and 
by Suresnes, striking into a rounda- 
bout road to Versailles beyond St. 
Cloud. It was June, a dustless and 
balmy noon, the air thinly gilded by a 
faint haze, and I know few things 
pleasanter than that road on a {fair 
day of the early summer and no 
sweeter way to course it than in an 
open car. 
“After all,” said George, with a plac- 
id wave of the hand, “I sometimes 
wish that the landscape had called me. 
You outdoor men have all the health 
and pleasure of living in the open, and 
as for the work—oh, you fellows think 
you work, but you don’t know what 
it means,” 
He indicated the white road running 
before us between open fields to a 
curve, where it descended to pass be- 
neath an old stone culvert. Beyond 
stood a thick grove with a clear sky 
flickering among the branches. An old 
peasant woman was pushing a heavy 
cart round the curve, a scarlet hand- 
kerchief knotted about her head. 
“You think it’s easy?” I asked. 
“Easy! -Two hours ought to do it 
2s well as it could be done—at least, 
the way you fellows do it!” 
He was interrupted by an outrage- 
ous uproar, the grisly scream of a siren 
and the cannonade of a powerful ex- 
haust, as a great white touring car 
Swung round us from behind at a speed 
that sickened me to see and, snorting 
thunder, passed us. 
“Seventy miles an hour!” gasped 
George. “Those are the— Oh, Lord! 
There they go!” 
{TO BE CONTINUED.] 
15 
The Wonderful Camel. 
When the nature of the work per- 
furmed by the camel is considered it 
is perbaps its very sommnolent organi- 
zation whieh best fits it for that work 
and which gives color to the accusa- 
tions of laziness and stupidity mane 
against it. It can live on a diet as ap- 
petizing as “a green umbrella,” to use 
Sir Samuel Baker’s words. Barren, 
leafless twigs, dried shrubs and the 
tough, paperlike substances of the 
dome palm form the chief courses in 
the menu prepared by nature for this 
flenizen of the desert. The marvelous 
arrangement for the retaining of a sup- 
ply of water sufficient to last for many 
days makes the camel’s powers of en- 
durance phenomenal. The ordinary 
freight camel is expected to carry a 
load of from 500 to 1,000 pounds across 
the desert at the rate of twenty-five 
miles a day and to keep it up for 
three days without a fresh supply of 
water. Some will cover fifty miles a 
day for five days without water, and 
the swifter species will carry their 
riders 100 miles“a day.—London Spare 
Mowents, 
The Humming Bird’s Flight. 
The flight of the little humming bird 
is mere remarkable than that of the 
eagle. We can understand the flapping 
of the eagle’s immense wibg support- 
ing a comparatively light body. But 
our little bird has a plump body. His 
Wings are not wide, but long, so he 
must move them rapidly to sustain his 
weight, and this he can do to perfec- 
tion. The vibrations of his wings are 
so rapid as to make them almost in- 
visible. He can use them to sustain 
himself-in midair, with his body as 
motionless as if perched on a twig. 
In this way he can sip the nectar of 
the delicate, fine stemmed  fiewers 
without alighting for a moment. He 
never alights while so engaged. He 
moves from flower to flower with a 
graceful and rapid movement, some- 
times chasing away a bee or hum- 
ming bird moth, of which he is very 
jealous. Nor is he much more favora- 
bly impressed with any small birds 
that seem in his way. He knows his 
power of flight, and he has no fear of 
any other bird.—St. Nicholas. 
Study In Still Life. 
“This,” said the artist, who’ was 
showing a visitor through his studio, 
“is a study in still life.” 
“Still life!’ echoed the visitor in as- 
tonishment,. “Why, it looks like the 
portrait of a man.” 
“Yes,” explained the artist, “it is a 
portrait of Mrs. Enpeck’s husband.”— 
Chicago News. 
Great Scheme, 
‘I’m going to marry a girl ten years 
older than I am,” says the philosopher 
of folly, “so that 1 can catch up with 
her by the time I’m fifty.’—Cleveland 
Leader. 
— 
It is an abominable thing for a man 
to commend himself.—Sterne, 
