"I've not ever seen him yet," he used to say, "though I've flown higher than anybody."
His chest of drawers was covered with small talismans, some the pledges of fortune given him by ladies, others picked up in significant surroundings or conditions of mind. He wore half a dozen rings, not one of which was worth fifty francs, but all of which were endowed with protective qualities. By the scapulars and medals he carried round his neck he should have been the most pietistic of men, but however sacred their inscriptions, they counted with him as merely more portable guaranties than the hideous little monkeys and mandarins that littered his room.
"When I've finished," he told Sylvia, "I shall throw all this away. When I'm digging in the good earth, my mascot will be my spade, nothing else, je t'assure."
Sylvia asked him why he had ever taken up flying.
"When I was small I adored my bécane; afterward I adored my automobile. On arrive comme ça. Ah, if the fools hadn't invented biplanes, how happy I should be."
Then perhaps a few moments later he would find himself in the presence of an audience, and one heard him at his boasting:
"Bigre! I am sorry for the man who cannot fly. One has not lived if one has not flown. The clouds! One would say a feather-bed beneath. To-morrow I shall loop the loop at five thousand mètres. One might say that all Petersburg will be regarding me."
There were two young acrobatic jugglers staying at the pension, who performed some extremely dangerous acts, but who performed them with such ease that they seemed like nothing, especially as the acrobats themselves were ladylike to a ludicrous degree.
"Oh, Bobbie, say, wouldn't it be fine to fly? Would you be terribly frightened? I should. Oh, I should be frightened."
"Don't you ever feel s-sick?" Bobbie asked the aviator.