tears actually spurted out of the eyes of the
amazing little creature. He took my hand and before I knew what he was
going to do with it he had touched it with his lips.

"My dear Professor!" I cried in dismay.

He put up a pudgy hand, and said with great dignity:

"I cannot dine with you, Monsieur de Gex. But I thank you from my heart
for your generous kindness. I shall never forget it to my dying day."

"But----"

He would listen to no protests. "If you will do me the honour of coming
at nine o'clock to the Cafe de Bordeaux, at the corner of the Place
du Gouvernement, I shall be there. _Auf wiedersehen_, Monsieur, and a
thousand thanks. I beg you as a favour not to accompany me. I couldn't
bear it."

And, drawing a great white handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his
eyes, blew his nose, and disappeared like a flash through the door which
I held open for him.

I went down to dinner in a chastened mood. The little man had not shown
me before the pathetic side of the freak's life. By asking him to dinner
as if he were normal I had earned his eternal gratitude. And yet, with
a smile, which I trust the Recording Angel when he makes up my final
balance-sheet of good and evil will not ascribe to an unfeeling heart,
I could not help formulating the hope that his gratitude would not be
shown by presents of China fowls sitting on eggs, Tyrolese chalets and
bottles with ladders and little men inside them. I did not feel within
me the wide charity of Lola Brandt; and I could not repress a smile, as
I ate my solitary meal, at the perils of the adventure to which I was
invited. I had no doubt that it bore the same relation to danger as
Monsieur Saupiquet's sevenpence-halfpenny bore to a serious debt.

Colonel Bunnion, a genial little red-faced man, with bulgy eyes and
a moustache too big for his body, who sat, also solitary, at the next
table to mine, suddenly began to utter words which I discovered were
addressed to me.

"Most amazing thing happened to me as I was coming down to dinner. Just
got out of the corridor to the foot of the stairs, when down rushed
something about three foot nothing in a devil of a top-hat and butted me
full in the pit of the stomach, and bounded off like a football. When I
picked it up I found it was a man--give you my word--it was a man. About
so high. Gave me quite a turn."

"That," said I, with a smile, "was my friend Professor Anastasius
Papadopoulos."

"A friend of yours?"

"He h