he talked!

"Well, Jansoulet, you have read it?"

"What?"

"How, then! you do not know? You have not read what the _Messenger_ says
about you this morning?"

Beneath the dark tan of his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and,
his eyes shining with pleasure:

"Is it possible--the _Messenger_ has spoken of me?"

"Through two columns. How is it that Moessard has not shown it to you?"

"Oh," put in Moessard modestly, "it was not worth the trouble."

He was a little journalist, with a fair complexion and smart in his
dress, sufficiently good-looking, but with a face which presented
that worn appearance noticeable as the special mark of waiters in
night-restaurants, actors, and light women, and produced by conventional
grimacing and the wan reflection of gaslight. He was reputed to be the
paid lover of an exiled and profligate queen. The rumour was whispered
around him, and, in his own world, secured him an envied and despicable
position.

Jansoulet insisted on reading the article, impatient to know what had
been said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the duke's.

"Let some one go fetch me a _Messenger_ quickly," said the Nabob to the
servant behind him.

Moessard intervened.

"It is needless. I must have the thing on me somewhere."

And with the absence of ceremony of the tavern _habitue_, of the
reporter who scribbles his paragraph with his glass beside him, the
journalist drew out a pocket-book, crammed full of notes, stamped
papers, newspaper cuttings, notes written on glazed paper with crests,
which he proceeded to litter over the table, pushing away his plate in
order to search for the proof of his article.

"There you are." He passed it over to Jansoulet; but Jenkins besought
him:

"No, no; read it aloud."

The company having echoed the request in chorus, Moessard took back his
proof and commenced to read in a loud voice, "The Bethlehem Society
and Mr. Bernard Jansoulet," a long dithyramb in favour of artificial
lactation, written from notes made by Jenkins, which were recognisable
through certain fine phrases much affected by the Irishman, such as "the
long martyrology of childhood," "the sordid traffic in the breast," "the
beneficent nanny-goat as foster-mother," and finishing, after a pompous
description of the splendid establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy
of Jenkins and a glorification of Jansoulet: "O Bernard Jansoulet,
benefactor of childhood!" It was a sight to see