uch a
spot to do work in were questions asked you mysteriously by every object
about. As soon as he had waved Chrysler to one of the chairs and sank
back upon another into a shadow, he stretched out his hand and pulled
the basket of bottles towards him.

"Now, sir, the question of fortune to every good man as he enters the
world: 'What will you have.' I don't believe in fate: I believe in
fortune: good things for everybody; let him choose. It's the man who
won't accept good mouthfuls who is miserable. My Lord, what will you
have?"

"I never take anything, thank you!"

"Eh, Mon Dieu! You wouldn't have me drink alone! You grieve my soul,
Chrysler! _Bois, done_, my dear friend, we will be merry together. In
this cursed country, among these oxen of the farms, we don't often meet
a civilized friend." In saying this, he was dexterously pulling the cork
from a bottle of champagne, which his right hand now poured into two
wine glasses, as skilfully as his left had whisked them out of a corner
of the basket.

"Drink quickly,--Eh bien, you do not wish to? Your health then!--May you
long survive your principles, and experience a blessed death of gout!"

He quaffed off the glass and poured out another, laughing and chatting
on with such bounding, irresistible spirits that his guest caught a kind
of sympathetic infection. Glass after glass interminable disappeared
down his throat in a kind of intermittent cascade. The Ontarian laughed
more than he had done for many a year.

"But, De Bleury," he got breath to say, "what is your important capacity
here, that they give you such sumptuous quarters?"

"Commercial traveller in the only commerce of the country. We have no
business here, you know, except statesmanship, the trade in voters, _le
metier de ministre_. You see a man;--tell me how much he owns:--I can
tell you his election price. The schedule is simply: How much taxes does
he pay?--Pay my taxes; I vote your side. There lies the only shame of my
Scotch blood that they have never devised a commerce so obvious. It's
like a bailiff we used to tease; he had no money, poor devil, so when he
came into the bar he used to say to us, 'Make me drunk and have some fun
with me.' 'Pay my taxes and have some fun with me:' the same thing, you
see. All men are merchandise. Ross de Bleury alone has no price--but for
a regular good guzzler, I could embezzle a Returning Officer."

A rap sounded on the door of the stairs.

"I resemble my a