"You once wrote a poem (how proud I was that I had recollected it), 'A minuit tous les chats sont gris.'"
"C'est vrai, mais je parlais des Schahs de Perse."
"Est-ce que tous les Schahs de Perse sont gris à minuit?"
"Madame, tous les Schahs de Perse que j'ai eu l'honneur de voir à minuit ont été gris comme des Polonais."
"But the 'chats' you wrote about go mewing on roofs at midnight. Do the
Schahs de Perse do that?"
"Did I write that?" said he. "Then I must have meant cats. You are very inquisitive, Madame."
"I confess I am," I answered. "You see, that poem of yours has been set to music, and I sing it; and you may imagine that I want to know what I am singing about. One must sing with an entirely different expression if one sings of gray cats or of tipsy Persian sovereigns."
He laughed and asked, with an innocent look, "Do you think I could have meant that at midnight nothing has any particular color—that everything is gray?"
"I don't know what you meant; but please tell me what you want me to believe, because I believe everything I am told. I am so naïve."
"You naïve! You are the most blasée person I ever met."