e l'Europe, at Warsaw, long
into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts
which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He
was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there
came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A
fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains
ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could
perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And
in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the
lives of individuals.

Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of
affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which
were affecting the lives of those around him. More than any other
do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his
fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life
they happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small
feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French
Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris
to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The
western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.

Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop.
He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which
Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.

"One likes," he said to the stout Jewess, "to talk one's own tongue in a
foreign land."

And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped
past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the
day, and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower
at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in
his buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the
pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.

"Ah!" he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
writing-table. "Ah! if you were only idle, as I am"--he paused, with
a sharp, little sigh--"if you only could be idle, how much happier you
would be!"

"A Frenchman," replied Cartoner, without looking up, "thinks that noise
means happiness."

"Then you are happy--you pretend to happiness?" inquired Deulin,
sitting down without being invited to do