“A quite simple matter,” the Stranger assured them. “A little sleep and a forgetting, and the years lie behind us. Come, gentlemen. Have I your consent?”
It seemed a question hardly needing answer. To escape at one stride the long, weary struggle; to enter without fighting into victory! The young men looked at one another. And each one, thinking of his gain, bartered the battle for the spoil.
It seemed to them that suddenly the lights went out; and a darkness like a rushing wind swept past them, filled with many sounds. And then forgetfulness. And then the coming back of light.
They were seated at a table, glittering with silver and dainty chinaware, to which the red wine in Venetian goblets, the varied fruit and flowers, gave colour. The room, furnished too gorgeously for taste, they judged to be a private cabinet in one of the great restaurants. Of such interiors they had occasionally caught glimpses through open windows on summer nights. It was softly illuminated by shaded lamps. The Stranger’s face was still in shadow. But what surprised each of the three most was to observe opposite him two more or less bald-headed gentlemen of somewhat flabby appearance, whose features, however, in some mysterious way appeared familiar. The Stranger had his wine-glass raised in his hand.
“Our dear Paul,” the Stranger was saying, “has declined, with his customary modesty, any public recognition of his triumph. He will not refuse three old friends the privilege of offering him their heartiest congratulations. Gentlemen, I drink not only to our dear Paul, but to the French Academy, which in honouring him has honoured France.”
The Stranger, rising from his chair, turned his piercing eyes—the only part of him that could be clearly seen—upon the astonished Poet. The two elderly gentlemen opposite, evidently as bewildered as Paul himself, taking their cue from the Stranger, drained their glasses. Still following the Stranger’s lead, leant each across the table and shook him warmly by the hand.
“I beg pardon,” said the Poet, “but really I am afraid I must have been asleep. Would it sound rude to you”—he addressed himself to the Stranger: the faces of the elderly gentlemen opposite did not suggest their being of much assistance to him—“if I asked you where I was?”
Again there flickered across the Stranger’s face the smile that was felt rather than seen. “You are in a private room of the Café Pretali,” he answered. “We are met this evening to celebrate your recent elevation into the company of the Immortals.”
“Oh,” said the Poet, “thank you.”
“The Academy,” continued the Stranger, “is always a little late in these affairs. Myself, I could have wished your election had taken place ten years ago, when all France—all France that counts, that is—was talking of you. At fifty-three”—the Stranger touched lightly with his fingers the Poet’s fat hand—“one does not write as when the sap was running up, instead of down.”