ood ship Isabella bound for Naples, eighty-five dollars first
class. Philomene, with a porky look, asked him what he wished.

He announced in French that he desired of all things to "strangle a
parrokeet." This was some absurd slang for saying he wanted an absinthe.

He was a gaunt, tall, round-shouldered, queer old fellow with a gray
beard and a matted moustache, colored with the brown stain of cigarette
smoke. As ugly, I thought, as ugly as--oh, Socrates. And yet with
something lovable about him. And his combination of dress was certainly
odd enough: a frayed, cutaway coat with extremely long tails, dripping
wet and dangling cylindrically like sections of melted stovepipe; mussy,
baggy old gray trousers; a blue plush waistcoat; a black, but clean
muffler pinned tight up under his chin with a safety pin of the
brassiest; and a broad-brimmed black slouch hat, so broad of brim that
he walked forever in its shadow. This hat he kept on all the time. His
hands were long and clean and white--the virile, sensitive hands of a
poet, I thought. The eyes were the fascinating feature of the man. I
said to myself right away, "This man is a mystic." Though they burned
brightly in their sockets, they had a trick of turning abruptly dim; a
sort of film or veil, closed over them. "Druid or old Celt," I murmured.
"Give him a bit of mistletoe and he'd call his gods right down into my
_demi-tasse_ and scare the poker game into fits."

He swallowed his whole glass of absinthe in five gulps--a performance
that it would make a cow shudder to watch--threw back his head, and,
with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but
the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him--gross,
pleasant, Provencal Pigalle--and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling
the tiny cards in his great fat hands.

When the second absinthe came the old man took it slowly; settled
himself back on his shoulder-blades and the tail of his spine, and
pulled his hat down level with his eyes, as if he intended to spend
a considerable time with us. He called for a package of French
cigarettes--_cigarettes jaunes_--and proceeded to color his moustache
a riper brown. "Now my adventure has knocked and come in," I thought.
"If he is my adventure, I cannot help him--nor can I keep him off. He
is the _primum mobile_. It is up to him."

Suddenly my ears were shocked with a sharp argument between two young
fellows at the poker table. No, it w