his love song with his
finger-tips on the table, the door from the common room of the inn was
opened and a man entered whom La Mothe at once guessed to be one of his
three good friends in Amboise. In one hand he carried a lighted
candle, in the other a great horn cup.

"Thanks, Jean," he said patronizingly, nodding towards the room he had
left as he spoke. "Close the door behind me, my good fellow: both my
hands are full." Then raising the candle, he turned and scrutinized La
Mothe with a curiosity as great as La Mothe's own and much more frankly
evident.

And he was worth studying, as a rare specimen is studied in the
difficulty of classification. If there were many such men in France La
Mothe had never yet met one of them. He was under middle height, the
jaunty, alert youthfulness of his slim figure, supple without great
strength, contradicted by the grey which shot with silver the thin hair
falling almost to his narrow shoulders, and, as La Mothe searched him
in the wavering, guttered candle-light, it flashed upon him that
contradiction was the note of all his characteristics. The weak chin
with the unkempt straggle of a beard gave the lie to a forehead
magnificent in its abundant strength of mental power: the promise of
the luminous, clear eyes was robbed of fulfilment by the loose mouth
with the slime of the gutter and sensuality of the beast writ large
upon its thick lips. From the thin peaked nose upwards it was the face
of a son of the gods who knew his parentage and birthright; but
downward that of a human swine who loved the foulness of the trough for
the trough's sake. A Poet of poets, said the eyes: Slime of the gutter
and old age unashamed of its shame, retorted the mouth; and both spoke
truth. Evidently his scrutiny satisfied him, for he heaved a sigh of
contentment as he drew nearer to La Mothe.

"The image of what I was at your age," he said, and again there was the
note of contradiction. The voice was the sweet, full voice of a
singer, but ruined at the first emotion into roughness by excess.
Placing the candlestick on the table he lifted La Mothe's wine bottle
and smelt it with slow carefulness, applying it first to one nostril
then to the other. "Vintage '63," he said appreciatively, "and that
animal Saxe fobs me off with '75."

"Then try my '63," said La Mothe, "and we shall see if Saxe has another
bottle of the same."

Promptly the contents of the horn mug were flung with a splash