ening gruff voice behind him, "it is strictly forbidden to injure the shrubs and plants of the garden!"

"Monsieur!" said a threat- Pah-fame! A myth! If only he had listened to the protestations of the good Jules, and had worn the familiar red button. Even the most ignorant of park-keepers would have hesitated to bully one who wore the token of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Or if, at ordinary times, it had been de rigeur to go about in that famous green uniform

M. René recovered his point in haste, dropped it, and wheeled to find a uniformed keeper of the garden regarding him menacingly.

"Ah, pardon!" M. René said, somewhat shamefacedly. "In the vigour created by the beauty of the morning, I forgot." "It is forbidden," the official repeated sternly.

"It was foolish, perhaps," M. René said in contrition, "but I do not think I have injured the bush even slightly." The official peered at the bush suspiciously and at length. "Well," he admitted, after a pause which brought the poet no little apprehension, "perhaps not. But it is forbidden. It must not happen again, or I shall be compelled, monsieur, to deal drastically with you."

"I am obliged indeed for your forbearance," M. René said relievedly. "Permit me to offer you

He got away just as the inevitable crowd began to gather. So much for fame, the poet exploded, as exasperatedly he hurried toward the Bois de Boulogne. So much for all the writing in the news-sheets, for all the photographs and sketches published, so much for being one of the forty immortals! To think that a member of the Académie Française should be bullied by an ungrammatical park-keeper for light-heartedly piercing a bush with a cane!

And at that play of imagination, M. René began to laugh. What nonsensical tricks the imagination sometimes played, to think of strutting about in the bright sun of a spring morning all stiffly got up in gold emblazoning and braided pantaloons-carrying a sword, too! Simply because a parkkeeper very rightly checked one for stabbing at a bush.

Then M. René felt glad that he had tipped the park-keeper. The man had merely done his duty, and he was not to be blamed if he failed to recognise a member of the Académie. What had a poor fellow like that to do with literature ! And, after all, it was nothing detractive of one's celebrity if a few people here and there failed to know one for one of the Forty. M. René's mood lightened again. It was pleasant to think that one's days of comparative penury were probably over, that M. Martin's prophecy about riches most likely was true. The English and American translations most surely would augment one's income-probably double it. English and American authors sometimes made great fortunes.

his bulk, the man was beautifully turned out. The poet gathered all this in one flash before he turned his gaze up again to the heavy-jowled face. He held out his hand.

"It is "he said tentatively. 'Paul Cordery," said the opulent-looking one.

Now that the position of Academician had to be kept up, an augmented income became a necessity. It had been hard to get along sometimes since the war and the fall of the franc. A small private income, which before the war had meant safety at least, now went for next to nothing. M. René Paul Cordery-Paul Cordetermined to take no chances. dery? M. René turned the He would attend every meet- name over in his mind while ing of the Academy, and so he still gazed mildly at the obtain the full allowance. If man. Then suddenly it came affluence came from the foreign to him who the man was. It editions, so much the better. came to him in a series of picYes, it was something, after tures, rapidly flashed. He saw all, to be a member of the himself as a boy in a neat sailor Académie Française. It set suit playing in the courtyard the seal of eminence on one, of an old Paris house with almost made certain a world- another boy of like age, bulletwide reputation. As a young- headed and rather roughly ster he had often wondered dressed. He saw a gaunt but what real fame would be like, powerful woman on her knees and now, at not too much over beside a bucket of water, scrubfifty, he had attained it. Every- bing out the tiled corridors of body wouldthe house, or scrubbing its steps. The bullet-headed lad was the son of the charwoman, engaged periodically to do the rough work about the d'Erlande household. Mother and son bore the name of Cordery.

“Bon jour, M. René!"

It was a singularly hearty greeting that brought the poet out of his dreaming to a realisation that he was already in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. He found himself faced by a large and impressive stranger. And yet, not quite a stranger. There was something oddly familiar about the man's face, though for the life of him M. René could not recollect where he had seen it. The man was dressed in clothes of unmistakably good cut, his linen was immaculate, his boots had been made on a fashionable last, his hat had been purchased nowhere else but from one shop in London's Mayfair. Despite

"You look very well, Paul- sight, with illuminating in

'But, naturally," murmured and most point-device of chaufthe poet. feurs.

A DIVERSION.

BY OEL.

functions, interspersed with military manœuvres. During the longer period we dwell aloof, depending upon the occasional visits of itinerant Generals and miscellaneous tourists to create diversity; and when these are thrust upon us in insufficient quantities, we acquire other diversions. Which brings me to my tale.

AMONG the very small community at home which has any real interest in India, there exists a general impression that those of us who have elected to spend our lives in that harassed land find our compensation in the fact that boredom is eliminated by the range of congenial pursuits which the East offers. This impression is caused partly by the tone of the normal westward-bound showed at its dawn little prommail letter, which is naturally ise of dissociating itself from a record of the brighter events its of the week, and partly by our habit, when home on leave, of comparing general conditions with the memory of a series of isolated occurrences six thousand miles away.

Not that we lead a dull existence-far from it. But undoubtedly there are periods when routine holds sway, and therein lies our greatest danger. An Indian will sit for hour after hour, lost in meditation; and what he is meditating no one, least of all himself, can say. The East casts its spell upon us from the start, and to combat it we require variety to stimulate interest, and interest to maintain effort.

In my own particular case, my regiment is stationed for nine months in the year on the top of a mountain. The remaining three months are spent in the plains in a whirl of social

VOL. CCXXIII.-NO. MCCCLII.

The 8th of October 1927

immediate neighbours. There was, it is true, a battalion parade timed to take place at twelve o'clock, at which we were to be present to see the swearing-in of the annual batch of recruits. But generally there was no indication of the possibility of any form of upheaval.

In

Shortly after ten o'clock, therefore, I found myself in the orderly room, engaged, with two other officers, in our quarterly entertainment of auditing the regimental accounts. the middle of a thrilling discussion on investments, I suddenly became aware of a stir amongst the office orderlies and hangerson, who invariably congregate in the verandah outside; and then, in the mongrel dialect of our hills, I caught the local version of my name and the word "panther." Rushing out, I recognised, in a circle of our 2 D 2

men, the guardian of our rifle bare, and strewn with black range.