CHAPTER XXXV

PARIS

One hot day in June Schaunard was seated in the little office just behind
his shop. He was examining an improved telescopic sight which had just
been put upon the market by an opponent, criticizing it as one poet
criticizes the poem of another poet--that is to say, ferociously.

To him, thus meditating, from the Rue de la Paix suddenly came a gush of
sound which as suddenly ceased.

The shop door had opened and closed again, and Schaunard leaving his
office came out to see who the visitor might be.

He found himself face to face with Adams. He knew him by his size, but he
would scarcely have recognized him by his face, so brown, so thin and so
different in expression was it from the face of the man with whom he had
parted but a few months ago.

"Good day," said Adams. "I have come to pay you for that gun."

"Ah, yes, the gun," said Schaunard with a little laugh, "this is a
pleasant surprise. I had entered it amidst my bad debts. Come in,
monsieur, come into my office, it is cooler there, and we can talk. The
gun, ah, yes. I had entered that transaction in Ledger D. Come in, come
in. There, take that armchair, I keep it for visitors. Well, and how did
the expedition go off?"

"Badly," said Adams. "We are only back a week. You remember what you said
to me when we parted? You said, 'Don't go.' I wish I had taken your
advice."

"Why, since you are back sound and whole, it seems to me you have not done
so badly--but perhaps you have got malaria?"

The old man's sharp eyes were investigating the face of the other.
Schaunard's eyes had this peculiarity, that they were at once friendly to
one and cruel, they matched the eternal little laugh which was ever
springing to his lips--the laugh of the eternal mocker.

Schaunard made observations as well as telescopic sights and
wind-gauges--he had been making observation for sixty years--he took
almost as much interest in individual human beings as in rifles, and much
more interest in Humanity than in God.

He was afflicted with the malady of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries--he did not believe in God, only instead of hiding his disease
under a cloak of mechanical religion, or temporizing with it, he frankly
declared himself to be what he was, an atheist.

This fact did not interfere with his trade--a godly gunmaker gets no more
custom than an atheistical one; besides, Schaunard did not obtrude his
religious opinions after the fashion of