“My dear sir,” said Stenhouse, “did you ever meet a bad man worth twopence at his trade who had not good qualities? The bad man who is half good—so to speak—is a much more dangerous villain than the barrier bully without heart or soul. When hell makes a super-excellent devil, the devil puts goodness in just as a baker puts soda in his bread to make it rise. Look at Verlaine.”
“Well,” said Adams, “I have promised Berselius, and I will have to go. Besides, there are other considerations.”
He was thinking of Maxine, and a smile lit up his face.
“You seem happy enough about it,” said Stenhouse, rising to go. “Well, ‘he who will to Cupar maun to Cupar.’ When do you start?”
“I don’t know yet, but I shall hear to-night.”
They passed out into the Rue St. Honoré, where they parted.
“Good luck,” said Stenhouse, getting into a fiacre.
“Good-bye,” replied Adams, waving his hand.
Being in that quarter of the town, and having nothing especial to do, he determined to go to Schaunard’s in the Rue de la Paix, and see about his guns.
Schaunard personally superintends his own shop, which is the first gun-shop on the Continent of Europe. Emperors visit him in person and he receives them as an equal, though far superior to them in the science of sport. An old man now, with a long white beard, he remembers the fowling-pieces and rifles which he supplied to the Emperor Maximilian before that unfortunate gentleman started on his fatal expedition in search of a throne. He is a mathematician as well as a maker of guns; his telescopic sights and wind gauges are second to none in the world, and his shop front in the Rue de la Paix exposes no wares—it has just a wire blind, on which are blazoned the arms of Russia, England, and Spain.