Tut-tut! Fie-fie! my little
gay Clerk of the Court. Fie! Fie!"
M. Fille was greatly disconcerted. He had never been a Lothario. In forty
years he had never had an episode with one of "the other sex," but it was
not because he was impervious to the softer emotions. An intolerable
shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women, and even
small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with
little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques. Yet even with Zoe, who
was so simple and companionable and the very soul of childish confidence,
he used to blush and falter till she made him talk. Then he became
composed, and his tongue was like a running stream, and on that stream
any craft could sail. On it he became at ease with madame the Spanische,
and he even went so far as to look her full in the eyes on more than one
occasion.
"Answer me--ah, you cannot answer!" teasingly added the Judge, who loved
his Clerk of the Court, and had great amusement out of his discomfiture.
"You are convicted. At an age when a man should be settling down, you are
gallivanting with the wife of a philosopher."
"Monsieur--monsieur le juge!" protested M. Fille with slowly heightening
colour. "I am innocent, yes, altogether. There is nothing, believe me. It
is the child, the little Zoe--but a maid of charm and kindness.
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