"I as--p--pire to be so," replied the other, with a blush and a bow. "I m--m--mean to exhaust P--P--Paris. I'm going to write a b--b--book about it, when I get home."'
My friend to the right flashed one glance of silent scorn upon the future author, drained the last glass of his Bordeaux-Leoville, pushed his chair impatiently back, and said:--"This place smells like a kitchen. Will you come out, and have a cigar?"
So we rose, took our hats, and in a few moments were strolling under the lindens on the Quai de Corneille.
I, of course, had never smoked in my life; and, humiliating though it was, found myself obliged to decline a "prime Havana," proffered in the daintiest of embroidered cigar-cases. My companion looked as if he pitied me. "You'll soon learn," said he. "A man can't live in Paris without tobacco. Do you stay there many weeks?"
"Two years, at least," I replied, registering an inward resolution to conquer the difficulties of tobacco without delay. "I am going to study medicine under an eminent French surgeon."
"Indeed! Well, you could not go to a better school, or embrace a nobler profession. I used to think a soldier's life the grandest under heaven; but curing is a finer thing than killing, after all! What a delicious evening, is it not? If one were only in Paris, now, or Vienna,...."
"What, Oscar Dalrymple!" exclaimed a voice close beside us. "I should as soon have expected to meet the great Panjandrum himself!"
"--With the little round button at top," added my companion, tossing away the end of his cigar, and shaking hands heartily with the new-comer. "By Jove, Frank, I'm glad to see you! What brings you here?"
"Business--confound it! And not pleasant business either. A procés which my father has instituted against a great manufacturing firm here at Rouen, and of which I have to bear the brunt. And you?"
"And I, my dear fellow? Pshaw! what should I be but an idler in search of amusement?"