there.
Poor damned wretch, to end your pain
There is still the Greater Drink.
Yonder waits the sanguine Seine . . .
It is later than you think.

Lastly, you who read; aye, you
Who this very line may scan:
Think of all you planned to do . . .
Have you done the best you can?
See! the tavern lights are low;
Black's the night, and how you shrink!
God! and is it time to go?
Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think;
Sadly later than you think;
Far, far later than you think.

Scarcely do I scribble that last line on the back of an old envelope
when a voice hails me. It is a fellow free-lance, a short-story man
called MacBean. He is having a feast of _Marennes_ and he asks me to
join him.

MacBean is a Scotsman with the soul of an Irishman. He has a keen,
lean, spectacled face, and if it were not for his gray hair he might be
taken for a student of theology. However, there is nothing of the
Puritan in MacBean. He loves wine and women, and money melts in his
fingers.

He has lived so long in the Quarter he looks at life from the Parisian
angle. His knowledge of literature is such that he might be a Professor,
but he would rather be a vagabond of letters. We talk shop. We discuss
the American short story, but MacBean vows they do these things better
in France. He says that some of the _contes_ printed every day in the
_Journal_ are worthy of Maupassant. After that he buys more beer, and
we roam airily over the fields of literature, plucking here and there a
blossom of quotation. A fine talk, vivid and eager. It puts me into a
kind of glow.

MacBean pays the bill from a handful of big notes, and the thought of my
own empty pockets for a moment damps me. However, when we rise to go,
it is well after midnight, and I am in a pleasant daze. The rest of the
evening may be summed up in the following jingle:

Noctambule

Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your _bock_,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been the oysters.

In obscene arr