flagstone. The word “Café” on a corner building caught her eye. It was a native fonda, overflowing with straw-bottomed chairs and rusty iron tables half-way across the street, making carts and burros find their way round. Mexico’s outward signs at least were being done over into French. Hence the dignity of “Café.”

“Here is Paris,” the explorer announced. “And this is the Boulevard.” She seated herself before one of the iron tables that rocked on the egg-like cobblestones. She made Ney sit down also, and included Berthe and the sailor. An olive barefoot boy took their order for black coffee. Jacqueline’s 14elbows were on the table and her chin on two finger tips, and she disposed herself placidly, as though this were the Maison Dorée and Tout Paris sauntering by. The town was beginning to stretch after its siesta. That is to say, divers natives manifested symptoms of going to move in the course of time.

“Look!” exclaimed Jacqueline. “Only give yourself the trouble to look!”

She was pointing to a man, of course. The Chasseur stirred uneasily. One could never see to the end of Jacqueline’s slender finger. “There, Berthe,” she cried, “it’s Fra Diavolo, just strayed from the Opéra.”

The stranger she meant was talking darkly to another man in the door of the Café. If a Fra Diavolo, he was at least not disguised in his monk’s cowl, either because the April day was too hot or because he had never owned one. But he stood appareled in his banditti rôle, very picturesque and barbaric and malevolent. And though he posed heavily, he yet had that Satanic fascination which the beautiful of the masculine and the sinister of the devil cannot help having. His battered magnificence of a charro garb fitted well the diabolic character which Jacqueline assigned him. Spurs as bright as dollars jangled on high russet heels. His breeches closed to the flesh like a glove, so that his limbs were as sleek as some glossy forest animal’s. The cloth was of Robin-Hood green, foxed over in bright yellow leather. From hip to ankle undulated a seam of silver clasps. More silver, in braided scrolls, adorned his jacket, and wrapped twice around the waist was a red banda. Jacqueline would have preferred the ends dangling, like a Neapolitan’s. The ranchero, for such he appeared, wore two belts. One was a vibora, or serpent, for carrying money; the other held his weapons, a long hunting knife and a revolver, each in a scabbard of stamped leather embroidered with gold thread. His sombrero was high pointed and heavy, 15of chocolate-colored beaver encircled by a silver rope as thick as a garden hose.

“Now there’s realism in those properties,” Jacqueline noted with an artist’s critical eye. “See, there’s dry mud on his shoes, and his bright colors are faded by weather. That man sleeps among the rocks, I’ll wager, and he’s in the saddle almost constantly too. My faith, our Fra Diavolo is exquisite!”

The other of the two men was a withered, diminutive, gaunt and hollow old Mexican. He quailed like a frightened miser before Fra Diavolo.

“The risk? Coming to this town a risk!” Fra Diavolo was echoing the ancient man. “Bah, Murguía, you would haggle over a little risk as though it were some poor Confederate’s last bale of cotton. But I–por Dios, I get tired of the mountains. And then I come to Tampico. Yet you ask why I come? Bien, señor mio, this is why.” A gesture explained. Fra Diavolo unctuously rubbed his thumb over his fingers. The meaning of the gesture was, “Money!”

The old man recognized the pantomime and shivered. He shrank into his long black coat as though right willingly he would shrink away altogether. His parsimony extended even to speech. He pursued his fugitive voice into the depths of the voluminous coat and there clutched it as a coin in a chest. Then he paid it out as though it were a coin indeed.