"She takes the leading part in this play, doesn't she, according to the posters?"
"She takes the leading part in all my plays," said he.
"A first-class artiste, no doubt? I've never seen her act."
"Neither have I!" said Octave Boissy. And as I now yielded frankly to my astonishment, he added: "You see, I am not interested in the theatre. Not only have I never attended a rehearsal, but I have never seen a performance of any of my plays. Don't you remember that it was engineering, above all else, that attracted me? I have a truly wonderful engineering shop in the basement of my house in the Avenue du Bois. I should very much have liked you to see it; but you comprehend, don't you, that I'm just as much cut off from the Avenue du Bois as I am from Timbuctoo. My malady is the most exasperating of all maladies."
"Well, Boissy Minor," I observed, "I suppose it has occurred to you that your case is calculated to excite wonder in the simple breast of a brutal Englishman."
He laughed, and I was glad that I had had the courage to reduce him definitely to the rank of Boissy Minor.
"And not only in the breast of an Englishman!" he said. "Mais que veux-tu? One must live."
"But I should have thought you could have made a comfortable living out of engineering. In England consulting engineers are princes."
"Oh yes!"
"And engineering might have cured your neurasthenia, if you had taken it in sufficiently large quantities."