n proportion, and talked unceasingly and
positively at the top of his voice, as his wont was. He told me the story
of two of his best actions this year, a judicial separation--my uncle is
very strong in judicial separations--and the abduction of a minor. At
first I looked out for personal allusions. But no, he told the story from
pure love of his art, without omitting an interlocutory judgment, or a
judgment reserved, just as he would have told the story of Helen and
Paris, if he had been employed in that well-known case. Not a word about
myself. I waited, yet nothing came but the successive steps in the
action.

After the ice, M. Mouillard called for a cigar.

"Waiter, what cigars have you got?"

"Londres, conchas, regalias, cacadores, partagas, esceptionales. Which
would you like, sir?"

"Damn the name! a big one that will take some time to smoke."

Emile displayed at the bottom of a box an object closely resembling a
distaff with a straw through the middle, doubtless some relic of the last
International Exhibition, abandoned by all, like the Great Eastern, on
account of its dimensions. My uncle seized it, stuck it in the amber
mouthpiece that is so familiar to me, lighted it, and under the pretext
that you must always first get the tobacco to burn evenly, went out
trailing behind him a cloud of smoke, like a gunboat at full speed.

We "did" the arcades round the Odeon, where my uncle spent an eternity
thumbing the books for sale. He took them all up one after another, from
the poetry of the decedents to the Veterinary Manual, gave a glance at
the author's name, shrugged his shoulders, and always ended by turning to
me with:

"You know that writer?"

"Why, yes, uncle."

"He must be quite a new author; I can't recall that name."

M. Mouillard forgot that it was forty-five years since he had last
visited the bookstalls under the Odeon.

He thought he was a student again, loafing along the arcades after
dinner, eager for novelty, careless of draughts. Little by little he lost
himself in dim reveries. His cigar never left his lips. The ash grew
longer and longer yet, a lovely white ash, slightly swollen at the tip,
dotted with little black specks, and connected with the cigar by a thin
red band which alternately glowed and faded as he drew his breath.

M. Mouillard was so lost in thought, and the ash was getting so long,
that a young student--of the age that knows no mercy-was struck by these
twin phenomena