In the month of May 189..., at two o’clock in the afternoon, this occurred which might appear strange:
On the boulevard leading from the Madeleine to the Opéra, a stout gentleman of middle age, with nothing remarkable about him but uncommon corpulence, was approached by a thin gentleman, who smilingly, thinking no harm, we believe, gave him back a handkerchief that he had just dropped. The corpulent gentleman thanked him briefly and was going his way when he suddenly leant towards the thin man and must have asked for information, which must have been given, for he produced from his pocket a portable inkpot and pens, which without more ado he handed to the thin gentleman, and also an envelope which up to this minute he had been holding in his hand. And those who passed could see the thin man writing an address upon it.—But here begins the strange part of the story, which no newspaper, however, reported: the thin gentleman, after having given back the pen and the envelope, had not even the time to smile adieu when the fat gentleman, in form of thanks, abruptly struck him on the face, then jumped in a cab and disappeared, before any of the spectators, stupefied with surprise (I was there), thought of stopping him.
I have been told since that it was Zeus, the banker.
The thin gentleman, visibly upset by the attentions of the crowd, insisted that he had hardly felt the blow, notwithstanding that the blood poured out of his nose and his cut-open lip. He begged them to be kind enough to leave him alone, and the crowd, on his insistence, slowly dispersed. Thus the reader will allow us to leave at present some one he will hear of sufficiently later on.