self into the sea, greeted Adams with
effusion, when he read Pugin's card; gave him cigarettes, and shut the
open window in honour of his guest.

He worked himself into a state of indignation over Adams's story; as a
matter of fact he knew the whole thing well; but he was too polite to
discount his visitor's grievance, besides it gave him an opportunity to
declaim--and of course the fact that a king was at the bottom of it all,
added keenness to the arrows of his invective.

As Adams listened, delighted to have awakened such a trumpet; as he
listened to Ferminard thundering against all that over there, speaking as
though he were addressing the Chambre, and as though he had known Africa
intimately from his childhood, he noticed gradually and with alarm that
the topic was changing; just a moment ago it was Africa and its luckless
niggers; the Provencal imagination picturing them in glowing colours, and
the Provencal tongue rolling off their disabilities and woes. One would
have fancied from the fervour of the man that is was Ferminard who had
just returned from the Congo, not Adams.

Well, a moment after, and Africa had quite fallen out of the discussion.
As a child lets a Noah's Ark fall from its hands--elephants, zebras and
all on to the floor whilst he grasps for a new toy--so Ferminard let
Africa tumble whilst he grasped for Socialism, found it and swung it like
a rattle, and Socialism went the way of Africa as he seized at last that
darling toy--himself. The speech, in its relationship to the subject in
point, was the intellectual counterpart of the cry of those mechanical
pigs which the street venders blow up, and which, standing on a board,
scream in the face of Oxford Street, loudly at first, and then, as the
figure collapses, weakening in voice to the buzzing of a fly.

Ferminard was, in fact, a great child with a good heart, a Provencal
imagination, a power of oratory, a quickness in seizing upon little things
and making them seem great, coupled with a rather obscure understanding as
to the relative value of mountains and mole-hills. A noise maker of a
first-class description, but useless for any serious work. _Feu de bruit_
was his motto, and he lived up to it.

It is only when you try to enlist men on your side in some great and holy
cause, that you come to some knowledge of the general man's weakness and
want of holiness--your own included. Adams, during the fortnight that
followed his visit to Pugin, had