world, in man or dog. And he also had a dog in London,
a particularly rough Irish terrier called Tim; but as Tim would have
been quarantined every time he came home it was practically impossible
to bring him to the Continent. It will be seen, therefore, that
Lushington was really quite alone in the quiet hotel in the Rue des
Saints Peres.

He might have had company enough if he had wanted it, for he knew many
men of letters in Paris and was himself known to them, which is another
thing. They liked him, too, in their own peculiar way of liking their
foreign colleagues. Most of them, without affectation and in perfect
good faith, are convinced that there never was, is not, and never can
be any literature equal to the French except that of Edgar Poe; but
they feel that it would be rude and tactless of them to let us know
that they think so. They are the most agreeable men in the world, as a
whole, and considering what they really think of us--rightly or
wrongly, but honestly--the courtesy and consideration they show us are
worthy of true gentlemen. The most modest among ourselves seem a little
arrogant and self-asserting in comparison with them. They praise us,
sometimes, and not faintly either; but their criticism of us compares
us with each other, not with them. The very highest eulogy they can
bestow on anything we do is to say that it is 'truly French,' but they
never quite believe it and they cannot understand why that is perhaps
the very compliment that pleases us least, though we may have the
greatest admiration for their national genius. With all our vanity,
should we ever expect to please a French writer by telling him that his
work was 'truly English'?

Lushington liked a good many of his French colleagues in literature,
and had at least one friend among them, a young man of vast learning
and exquisite taste, who was almost an invalid. For a moment, he
thought of going to see this particular one amongst them all, but he
realised all at once that he did not wish to see any one at all that
day. He went out and wandered towards the Quai Voltaire, and smelt the
Seine and nosed an old book here and there at the stalls. Later he went
and ate something in an eating-house on the outskirts of the Latin
Quarter, and then went back to his hotel, smoked several more pipes by
the open window, and went to bed.

That was the first day, and the second was very like it, so that it is
not necessary to describe it in detail in