haracteristic gestures all attracted attention. If anything was to
be done he must begin by Anglicising his appearance. But whatever I might
urge I found him stubborn on that point; and, as for departure from
London, he preferred to postpone this until I should have seen my friend
the solicitor.

'Everything is as good as lost!' cried M. Desmoulin. 'How foolish, too,
of Clemenceau to have sent you to a swell hotel in a fashionable
neighbourhood! I am certain there are other French people staying at the
Grosvenor--I heard somebody talking French there this morning.'

This again might lead to unpleasantness, and I could see that the master
was gradually growing anxious. By this time, however, we had reached St.
James's Park, and there, as we seated ourselves on some chairs beside the
ornamental water, I led the conversation into another channel by
producing an evening newspaper, and reading therefrom successive
narratives of how M. Zola had sailed for Norway, how he had taken train
at the Eastern Terminus in Paris, and how he had been bicycling through
the Oberland on his way to some mysterious Helvetian retreat. Then we
laughed--ah! those journalists!--and fears were at an end.

The ducks paddled past us, the drooping foliage of the island trees
stirred in the warm breeze. On a bench near at hand a couple of vagrants
sat dozing, with their toes protruding through their wretched footgear.
Then a soldier, smart and pert, strolled up, a flower between his lips
and a good-looking girl beside him. Away in front of us were the top
windows and the roofs of St. Anne's Mansions. Farther, on the left, the
clock tower of Westminster glinted in the sun-rays.

'Fine ducks!' said M. Zola.

'A pretty corner,' added Desmoulin, waving his hand towards some branches
that drooped to the water's edge. And suddenly I remembered and told them
of another French exile, the epicurean St. Evremond, whose needs were
relieved by Charles II. appointing him governor of yonder Duck Island at
a salary of three hundred pounds a year.

'Well, I have little money in my pocket,' quoth Zola, 'but I don't think
I shall come to that. I hope that my pen alone will always yield me the
little I require.'

But Big Ben struck the hour. It was six o'clock. So we separated, Messrs.
Zola and Desmoulin to retire to the dungeon at the Grosvenor, and I to go
in search of my friend the solicitor at his private house at Wimbledon.