Doctor singing, now in
fantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from his chest.
He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter with
witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far more
charged with gas than the most delirious champagne, he filled out a long
glassful of froth and pushed it over to Jean-Marie. "Drink," he said;
"drink deep."

"I would rather not," faltered the boy, true to his training.

"What?" thundered Desprez.

"I am afraid of it," said Jean-Marie: "my stomach----"

"Take it or leave it," interrupted Desprez fiercely: "but understand it
once for all--there is nothing so contemptible as a precisian."

Here was a new lesson! The boy sat bemused, looking at the glass but not
tasting it, while the Doctor emptied and refilled his own, at first with
clouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the heady, prickling
beverage, and his own predisposition to be happy.

"Once in a way," he said at last, by way of a concession to the boy's
more rigorous attitude, "once in a way, and at so critical a moment, this
ale is a nectar for the gods. The habit, indeed, is debasing; wine, the
juice of the grape, is the true drink of the Frenchman, as I have often
had occasion to point out; and I do not know that I can blame you for
refusing this outlandish stimulant. You can have some wine and cakes. Is
the bottle empty? Well, we will not be proud; we will have pity on your
glass."

The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly while Jean-Marie finished
his cakes. "I burn to be gone," he said, looking at his watch. "Good God,
how slow you eat!" And yet to eat slowly was his own particular
prescription, the main secret of longevity!

His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last; the pair resumed their
places in the buggy, and Desprez, leaning luxuriously back, announced his
intention of proceeding to Fontainebleau.

"To Fontainebleau?" repeated Jean-Marie.

"My words are always measured," said the Doctor. "On!"

The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise; the air, the light,
the shining leaves, the very movements of the vehicle, seemed to fall in
tune with his golden meditations; with his head thrown back, he dreamed a
series of sunny visions, ale and pleasure dancing in his veins. At last
he spoke.

"I shall telegraph for Casimir," he said. "Good Casimir! a fellow of the
lower order of intelligence, Jean-Marie, distinctly not creative, not