A young Frenchman, whose poems were charming all readers just then, laughed merrily.
'Jules,' he said, with a sly glance towards the Englishman, 'is discreet.'
'It would never do,' interpolated an older man, with grave approval, 'if Jules were not so. This is the home of discretion. Who knows that this portier is a portier at all? Is it not easy to buy a hat-band with the word "Bristol" embroidered upon it? He may be an emissary from some journal of the Boulevards to collect information—the material for a canard—price two sous.'
Trist smiled meekly, and moved away with the servant at his heels.
'Ce Trist,' continued the older writer, when he was out of earshot, 'cannot come and go as we can—we who write but romances and idle paragraphs. It is a political power beneath that broad forehead, behind those woman's eyes. He smells of war. It is the stormy petrel, my friends.'
'I will see him,' Trist had said to the servant as they crossed the room together. 'But do not say who I am.'
Jules bowed in grave reproach at the implied possibility of an indiscretion.
'In the small room, monsieur?'
'Yes; in the small room.'
When the portier of the Hôtel Bristol entered the small room, he found a gentleman seated at a table writing.