The meeting being over, I left the hall in company with several of my colleagues, who renewed their congratulations with a sincerity in which I try to believe.
Having paused a moment on the quay near the lions of Creuzot to exchange a few greetings, I observed the man with the Assyrian beard and his beautiful companion enter a coupé. I happened accidentally to be standing next to an eloquent philosopher, of whom it is said that he is equally at home in worldly elegance and in cosmic theories. The young lady, putting her delicate head and her little hand out of the carriage door, called him by name and said with a slight English accent:
“My dear friend, you’ve forgotten me. That’s too bad!”
After the carriage had gone I asked my illustrious colleague who this charming person and her companion were.
“What!” he replied, “you do not know Miss Morgan and her physician Daoud, who cures all diseases by means of magnetism, hypnotism, and suggestion? Annie Morgan is the daughter of the richest merchant in Chicago. Two years ago she came to Paris with her mother, and she has had a wonderful house built on the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne trice. She is highly educated and remarkably clever.”
“You do not surprise me,” I replied, “for I have reason to think that this American lady is of a very serious turn of mind.”
My brilliant colleague smiled as he shook my hand.
I walked home to the Rue Saint Jacques, where I have lived these last thirty years in a modest lodging from which I can just see the tops of the trees in the garden of the Luxembourg, and I sat down at my writing-table.
For three days I sat there assiduously at work, before me a little statuette representing the goddess Pasht with her cat’s head. This little monument bears an inscription imperfectly deciphered by Monsieur Grébault I was at work on an adequate interpretation with comments. The incident at the institute had left a less vivid impression on my mind than might have been feared. I was not unduly disturbed. To tell the truth, I had even forgotten it a little, and it required new occurrences to revive its remembrance.
I had, therefore, leisure during these three days to bring my version of the inscription and my notes to a satisfactory conclusion. I only interrupted my archaeological work to read the newspapers, which were loud in my praise.