vinien. "It is simply that I have a
need of some misfortune to balance things."

There was a muffled quality in his voice, as though it were subdued
by the bulk from which it had to emerge; but his enunciation was as
clean and dexterous as in the days when he had made a vogue for his
poems by reading them aloud. It was the voice of a poet issuing from
the mouth of a glutton.

"To balance things," he repeated. "Fortune, my dear Cobb, is a
pendulum; the higher it rises on the side of happiness, the further
it returns on the side of disaster. And with me, who cannot take your
arm for a promenade along the pavement without a tightness in the
neck and a flutter of my heart, who may not go upstairs quicker than
a step a minute, disaster has only one shape. It arrives and I am
extinguished! It is for that reason that I fear a persistence of good
luck. Of late, the luck that dogs me has been incredible.

"Listen, now, to this! Three days ago, being in a difficulty, I go in
search of Rigobert. You know Rigobert, perhaps?"

"Yes," said Cobb. "That is, I have lent him money!"

"Precisely," agreed Savinien. "The sum which he owed me was no more
than two hundred and fifty francs but I had not much hope of him. I
went leisurely upon the way towards his studio, and at the corner by
the Madeleine I entered the post office to obtain a stamp for a
letter I had to send. The first thing which I perceived as I opened
the door was the back of Rigobert, as he sprawled against the
counter, signing his name upon a form while the clerk counted out
money to him. Hundred franc notes, my friend--noble new notes, ten in
number, a thousand francs in all, which Rigobert received for his
untidy autograph upon a blue paper. As for me, I planted myself there
at his back in an attitude of expectancy and determination to await
his leisure. He was cramming the money into his trousers pocket as he
turned round and beheld me. He was embarrassed. He, the universal
debtor, the bottomless pit of loans and obligations, to be discovered
thus.

"You!" he exclaimed.

"I!" I replied, and took him very firmly by the arm and mentioned my
little affair to him. He was not pleased, Rigobert, but for the
moment he was empty of excuses. When he suggested that we should go
to a cafe, to change one of the notes, that he might pay me my two
hundred and fifty, I agreed, for I had him by the arm, but I could
see that he was gathering his faculties, and I was wary. A bon