RRON

No! No! I insist! Only a great mind like yours can explain the strange
thing which has happened.

ALEXANDRE

Ah, in that case--what is a mere business affair compared with divine
philosophy? Far from being presse, friend Perron, I have an eternity at
your service.

PERRON

First of all, tell me the exact date!

ALEXANDRE

That I can do, and not on my own authority, which in such details is often
unreliable. This morning my concierge announced with great delicacy and
feeling that to-day is Friday, the fifteenth July, and my rent is once
more due. My rent, which--

PERRON

Friday the fifteenth! Impossible!

ALEXANDRE

Alas. My concierge is of a precision the most meticulous. For all legal,
financial and military affairs, throughout the French Republic at least,
to-day is Friday the fifteenth. But why should this seem impossible to
you, a scientist and a watchmaker?

PERRON

Only listen, and you will understand why I am tempted to doubt the
calendar of the Church itself. Two weeks ago my wife announced to me that
she had reason to expect the due arrival of a son. She said there could be
no question it will be a son because in her mother's family for three
generations it has been the same, three daughters followed by a son.

Eh bien, although I have always desired a son to follow me in this
honorable and scientific profession, nevertheless I received the news
with a certain consternation. In short, my affairs have not gone too well
of late, and without my wife's assistance by her needle....

That evening I thought much how I might increase my funds, and so for two
weeks--two weeks, mon ami--I have omitted my customary cafe after
dejeuner, which all these years I have not failed to take with a serious
group of friends at the Trois Arts, and even have I smoked no cigarettes.
True, this has not added much to our wealth, though it has been some
satisfaction to realize I have done my possible. My health has suffered
somewhat--I have grown absent-minded, and in the morning my head feels
strange. However, that may not be due entirely to my unnatural abstinence.

However, on Friday the fifteenth July, at three o'clock precisely, as I
sat here in meditation having finished a small work, I saw a telegraph boy
hurry toward me down the street. Then had I a premonition. My heart beat
as it has not these twenty years. In an instant I was reading the message:
my brother, who long ago ran away on adventure to In