a bowl, and some
hot water."

"They want some hot water," cried the servant, rushing into the kitchen
with a frightened look; "can they be ill at this hour?"

"Give the gentlemen what they want, you little simpleton!" replied
Mademoiselle Reine; "they probably want to concoct some of their Paris
drinks."

When all the articles necessary for the grog were on the table, Marillac
drew up an old armchair, took another chair to stretch his legs upon,
replaced his cap with a handkerchief artistically knotted about his
head, his boots with a pair of slippers, and, finally, lighted his pipe.

"Now," said he, as he seated himself, "I will listen without moving an
eyelid should your story last, like the creation, six days and nights."

Gerfaut took two or three turns about the room with the air of an orator
who is seeking for a beginning to a speech.

"You know," said he, "that Fate has more or less influence over our
lives, according to the condition of mind in which we happen to be. In
order that you may understand the importance of the adventure I am about
relating to you, it will be necessary for me to picture the state of
mind which I was in at the time it happened; this will be a sort of
philosophical and psychological preamble."

"Thunder!" interrupted Marillac, "if I had known that, I would have
ordered a second bowl."

"You will remember," continued Gerfaut, paying no attention to this
pleasantry, "the rather bad attack of spleen which I had a little over a
year ago?"

"Before your trip to Switzerland?"

"Exactly."

"If I remember right," said the artist, "you were strangely cross and
whimsical at the time. Was it not just after the failure of our drama at
the Porte Saint-Martin?"

"You might also add of our play at the Gymnase."

"I wash my hands of that. You know very well that it only went as far as
the second act, and I did not write one word in the first."

"And hardly one in the second. However, I take the catastrophe upon
my shoulders; that made two perfect failures in that d----d month of
August."

"Two failures that were hard to swallow," replied Marillac, "We can say,
for our consolation, that there never were more infamous conspiracies
against us, above all, than at the Gymnase. My ears ring with the hisses
yet! I could see, from our box, a little villain in a dress coat, in
one corner of the pit, who gave the signal with a whistle as large as a
horse-pistol. How I would have liked to cram