of idolatrous practices, devoted the concentration of her being to the
mysteries of her true religion. The excellence of the result affected
Pasquale so strongly that with his customary disregard of convention he
insisted on Antoinette being summoned to receive his congratulations.
He rose, made her a bow as if she were a Marquise of pre-revolutionary
days.

"It is a meal," said he, bunching up his fingers to his mouth and
kissing them open, "that one should have taken not sitting, but
kneeling."

"You stole that from Heine," said I, when the enraptured creature had
gone, "and you gave it out to Antoinette as if it were your own."

"My good Ordeyne," said he, "did you ever hear of a man giving anything
authentic to a woman?"

"You know much more about the matter than I do," I replied, and Pasquale
laughed.

It has been a pleasure to see him again--a creature of abounding
vitality whom time cannot alter. He is as lithe-limbed as when he was a
boy, and as lithe-witted. I don't know how his consciousness could
have arrived at appreciation of Antoinette's cooking, for he talked
all through dinner, giving me an account of his mirific adventures in
foreign cities. Among other things, he had been playing juvenile lead,
it appears, in the comic opera of Bulgarian politics. I also heard of
the Viennese dancer. My own little chronicle, which he insisted on my
unfolding, compared with his was that of a caged canary compared with
a sparrowhawk's. Besides, I am not so expansive as Pasquale, and on
certain matters I am silent. He also gesticulates freely, a thing
which is totally foreign to my nature. As Judith would say, he has a
temperament. His moustaches curl fiercely upward until the points
are nearly on a level with his flashing dark eyes. Another point of
dissimilarity between us is that he seems to have been poured molten
into his clothes, whereas mine hang as from pegs clumsily arranged about
my person. By no conceivable freak of outer circumstance could I have
the adventures of Pasquale.

And yet he thinks them tame! Lord! If I found myself hatching
conspiracies in Sofia on a nest made of loaded revolvers, I should feel
that the wild whirl of Bedlam had broken loose around me.

"But man alive!" I cried. "What in the name of tornadoes do you want?"

"I want to fight," said he. "The earth has grown too grey and peaceful.
Life is anaemic. We need colour--good red splashes of it--good wholesome
bloodshed."

Said I,