to move the stout baron to the depths of his being. His former
comrade's voice completed the awakening of such human qualities as still
remained in that bundle of gelatine.

His old chum! It was the first time in ten years, since their falling
out, that he had seen him at such close quarters. How many things those
swarthy features, those powerful shoulders ill-suited to an
embroidered coat, recalled to his mind! The thin woollen blanket, full
of holes, in which they both rolled themselves up to sleep on the deck
of the _Sinai_, the rations fraternally shared, the long walks through
the scorched country about Marseille, where they stole great onions and
ate them on the bank of a ditch, the dreams, the projects, the sous put
into the common purse, and, when fortune began to smile on them, the
antics they played together, the dainty little suppers at which they
told each other everything, with their elbows on the table.

How can two people ever fall out when they know each other so well, when
they have lived like twins clinging to a thin, strong nurse, poverty,
sharing her soured milk and her rough caresses! Such thoughts, long to
analyze, passed through Hemerlingue's mind like a flash of lightning.
Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the hand the Nabob
held out to him. Something of the animal nature stirred in them both,
stronger than their antipathy, and those two men, who had been trying
for ten years to ruin and dishonor each other, began to talk together
heart to heart.

Generally, when friends meet after a long separation, the first effusive
greetings at an end, they remain silent as if they had nothing to tell
each other, whereas it is the very abundance of things, their
precipitate struggle for utterance that prevents their coming forth. The
two former partners had reached that stage; but Jansoulet held the
banker's arm very tight, fearing that he might escape him, might resist
the kindly impulses that he had aroused in him.

"You are in no hurry, are you? We might walk a moment or two if you
choose. It has stopped raining, it will do us good--we shall be twenty
years younger."

"Yes, it's a pleasant thing," said Hemerlingue; "but I can't walk long,
my legs are heavy."

"True, your poor legs. See, there's a bench yonder. Let's go and sit
down. Lean on me, old fellow."

And the Nabob, with brotherly solicitude, led him to one of the benches
placed at intervals against the tombs, for the con