o me: and, what was
better, it was lit so that I could steer my way perfectly, although
the street seemed to be quite amazingly full of people, jostling and
chattering. I turned to call Jinks's attention to this, and was
saying something about a French crowd--how much cheerfuller it was
than your average English one--when all of a sudden Jinks wasn't
there! No, nor the crowd! I was alone on Bergerac bridge, and I
leaned with both elbows on the parapet and gazed at the Dordogne
flowing beneath the moon.

"It was not an ordinary river, for it ran straight up into the sky:
and the moon, unlike ordinary moons, kept whizzing on an axis like a
Catherine-wheel, and swelled every now and then and burst into
showers of the most dazzling fireworks. I leaned there and stared at
the performance, feeling just like a king--proud, you understand, but
with a sort of noble melancholy. I knew all the time that I was
drunk; but that didn't seem to matter. The bagmen had told me--"

I nodded again.

"That's one of the extraordinary things about the Mont-Bazillac," I
corroborated. "It's all over in about an hour, and there's not (as
the saying goes) a headache in a hogshead."

"I wouldn't quite say that," said Dick reflectively. "But you're
partly right. All of a sudden the moon stopped whizzing, the river
lay down in its bed, and my head became clear as a bell. 'The
trouble will be,' I told myself, 'to find the hotel again.' But I
had no trouble at all. My brain picked up bearing after bearing.
I worked back up the street like a prize Baden-Powell scout, found
the portico, remembered the stairway to the left, leading to the
lounge, went up it, and recognising the familiar furniture, dropped
into an armchair with a happy sigh. My only worry, as I picked up a
copy of the _Gil Blas_ and began to study it, was about Jinks.
But, you see, there wasn't much call to go searching after him when
my own experience told me it would be all right.

"There were, maybe, half a dozen men in the lounge, scattered about
in the armchairs and smoking. By and by, glancing up from my
newspaper, I noticed that two or three had their eyes fixed on me
pretty curiously. One of them--an old boy with a grizzled
moustache--set down his paper, and came slowly across the room.
'Pardon, monsieur,' he said in the politest way, 'but have we the
honour of numbering you amongst our members?' 'Good Lord!' cried I,
sitting up, 'isn't this the _Couronne d'