that it became sublime.
Great furnaces gleamed red in the twilight, and their fires were
reflected in horrible black canals; processions of heavy vapour drifted
in all directions across the sky, over what acres of mean and miserable
brown architecture! The air was alive with the most extraordinary,
weird, gigantic sounds. I do not think the Five Towns will ever be
described: Dante lived too soon. As for the erratic and exquisite
genius, Simon Fuge, and his odalisques reclining on silken cushions on
the enchanted bosom of a lake--I could no longer conjure them up even
faintly in my mind.

'I suppose you know Simon Fuge is dead?' I remarked, in a pause.

'No! Is he?' said Mr Brindley, with interest. 'Is it in the paper?'

He did not seem to be quite sure that it would be in the paper.

'Here it is,' said I, and I passed him the Gazette.

'Ha!' he exclaimed explosively. This 'Ha!' was entirely different from
his 'Ah!' Something shot across his eyes, something incredibly
rapid--too rapid for a wink; yet it could only be called a wink. It was
the most subtle transmission of the beyond-speech that I have ever
known any man accomplish, and it endeared Mr Brindley to me. But I knew
not its significance.

'What do they think of Fuge down here?' I asked.

'I don't expect they think of him,' said my host.

He pulled a pouch and a packet of cigarette papers from his pocket.

'Have one of mine,' I suggested, hastily producing my case.

He did not even glance at its contents.

'No, thanks,' he said curtly.

I named my brand.

'My dear sir,' he said, with a return to his kindly exasperation, 'no
cigarette that is not fresh made can be called a cigarette.' I stood
corrected. 'You may pay as much as you like, but you can never buy
cigarettes as good as I can make out of an ounce of fresh B.D.V.
tobacco. Can you roll one?' I had to admit that I could not, I who in
Bloomsbury was accepted as an authority on cigarettes as well as on
porcelain. 'I'll roll you one, and you shall try it.'

He did so.

I gathered from his solemnity that cigarettes counted in the life of Mr
Brindley. He could not take cigarettes other than seriously. The worst
of it was that he was quite right. The cigarette which he constructed
for me out of his wretched B.D.V. tobacco was adorable, and I have made
my own cigarettes ever since. You will find B.D.V. tobacco all over the
haunts frequented by us of the Museum now-a-days, solely owing to the
ex