im on the floor.

"Why, Stennis," I cried, "you're the last man I expected to find here."

"You won't find me here long," he replied. "'_King Pandion he is dead;
all his friends are lapped in lead._' For men of our antiquity, the poor
old shop is played out."

"'_I have had playmates, I have had companions_,'" I quoted in return.
We were both moved, I think, to meet again in this scene of our old
pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both
already so much altered.

"That is the sentiment," he replied. "'_All, all are gone, the old
familiar faces._' I have been here a week, and the only living creature
who seemed to recollect me was the Pharaon. Bar the Sirons, of course,
and the perennial Bodmer."

"Is there no survivor?" I inquired.

"Of our geological epoch? not one," he replied. "This is the city of
Petra in Edom."

"And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the ruins?" I asked.

"Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth," he returned. "Such a
gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that! I wonder Siron didn't
sweep us from his premises."

"Perhaps we weren't so bad," I suggested.

"Don't let me depress you," said he. "We were both Anglo-Saxons, anyway,
and the only redeeming feature to-day is another."

The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived
in my mind. "Who is he?" I cried. "Tell me about him."

"What, the Redeeming Feature?" said he. "Well, he's a very pleasing
creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. He is
very British, though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you'll find him too
much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to think of it, on the other
hand, you ought to get on famously, he is an admirer of your great
republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and
sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I warned you he was artless."

"What papers are they?" cried I.

"San Francisco papers," said he. "He gets a bale of them about twice a
week, and studies them like the Bible. That's one of his weaknesses;
another is to be incalculably rich. He has taken Masson's old
studio--you remember?--at the corner of the road; he has furnished it
regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with _vins fins_ and
works of art. When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des
Brigands to make punch--they do all that we did, like some nauseous form
of ape (I never appreciated before what a creatur