"Well," I asked him, "a penny for your thoughts?"
"I am trying to discover the reason for that man's hatred against you."
"You do not understand it?"
"No."
"You remember the bear beef-steak in my Impressions de Voyage?"
"Of course! it is the first thing that I read in it."
"Well, it was at that good fellow's house that the incident of M. Alexandre Dumas eating a bear-steak in 1832 happened."
"Well?"
"Many others like you read of the bear-steak; so, one fine day, a traveller, more curious, or with less appetite, than others said, when he looked at the menu—
"'Have you any bear?'