Whether it was a smile of vanity, or a smile of scorn for the ignorance of the man who was not quite sure whether he had ever heard of him or not, I cannot altogether determine; but there the smile was, and it lasted through several sentences.
"It is not impossible," he said, "for I have done things—aye, and I have suffered things! I have been condemned to death by Spaniards at Santiago de Cuba! I checked the worst excesses of the Paris Commune! And there are other stories. The revolutions, in short, have kept me very busy."
"You speak," I protested, "as though to be a revolutionist were a calling, a profession, a métier."
The last word seemed to please him; he smiled again as he rolled it over on his tongue.
"Un métier? Je le crois bien. And why not? Is there no need for 'skilled labour' in the making of a revolution? No less, I take it, than in the building of a battleship. Why, yes, then, if you choose to put it so, I am a revolutionist by métier."
"But still——"
The eyes flashed, and the smile changed its character.
"A poor métier, do you think? Then think again. It has its hazards? Granted. It is less safe than your métier of writing for the newspapers? Granted also. But at least it quickens the pulse and stirs the blood. At the end of it, if one is still alive, one can at least boast that one has lived. To have gambled with death in one's youth—that is something worth remembering in one's old age. And I have gambled with death wherever I could find a worthy stake to play for. If I should ever tell my stories——"
But when a man talks in that way it needs little pressure to get the stories told, and I had not pursued my acquaintance with Stromboli very far before the pressure was applied.
"Voyons!" he said to me one day. "I have creditors; they ask for money, a thing which I have had little leisure to amass. If there were a way of turning stories into money!"