The bosom of the Frenchman's family was the same as those he had known
in the past, even to the patterns of the wallpaper and movables. But
the jeunes, he perceived with regret, were totally different from their
forerunners. They were much more shallow and puerile, much less really
clever. The secrets they wrested from the Universe were not such
important and interesting secrets as had been wrested by the old jeunes.
This he believed and deplored until one day he found himself seated at
a restaurant next to a too well-fed man whom, in spite of the ravages
of comfortable living, he recognized as one of the jeunes of his own
period. This one had been wont to describe himself and three or four
others as the Hermits of the New Parnassus. He and his school had talked
outside cafes and elsewhere more than solitaries do as a rule; but,
then, rules were what they had vowed themselves to destroy. They
proclaimed that verse, in particular, was free. The Hermit of the
New Parnassus was now in the Ministry of the Interior, and already
decorated: he expressed to Trent the opinion that what France needed
most was a hand of iron. He was able to quote the exact price paid for
certain betrayals of the country, of which Trent had not previously
heard.

Thus he was brought to make the old discovery that it was he who had
changed, like his friend of the Administration, and that les jeunes were
still the same. Yet he found it hard to say what precisely he had lost
that so greatly mattered; unless indeed it were so simple a thing as his
high spirits.

One morning in June, as he descended the slope of the Rue des Martyrs,
he saw approaching a figure that he remembered. He glanced quickly
round, for the thought of meeting Mr Bunner again was unacceptable. For
some time he had recognized that his wound was healing under the spell
of creative work; he thought less often of the woman he loved, and with
less pain. He would not have the memory of those three days reopened.

But the straight and narrow thoroughfare offered no refuge, and the
American saw him almost at once.

His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man.
They sat long over a meal, and Mr Bunner talked. Trent listened to
him, now that he was in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then
contributing a question or remark. Besides liking his companion, he
enjoyed his conversation, with its unending verbal surprises, for its
own sake.

Bunner was, it appea