"I am sorry to hear that; but let me suggest your first trying the effect of the change of air?"
"Really, sir, you are ignorantly striving to undermine the study of my life. Don't suppose for an instant that any scenery would keep me on my legs five minutes past my time, or that air has anything to do with provoking sleep. In primitive times, such might have been the case, and it may be so even now with juveniles; but too much artificiality surrounds adults. I shall be obliged to have recourse to my chest, and I shall give you a treat when I open it for inspection. It is a multum in parvo! Make your mind quite easy that, come what will, I have almost every remedy, not merely within call, but within reach. There's consolation for you!"
I bowed my acknowledgment, which I could not find words, I own, to express.
Presently my friend proposed that we should have half an hour's reading; and, on his asking me if I had any skill in elocution, I replied that, having some taste for it, I should be happy to read aloud to him, if it would afford him any pleasure.
"Well, you won't be offended," he said, "if I ask you to stop, should I not like your style?"
"Certainly not—the moment I fatigue you," I replied.
"And on no account exceed half an hour. Never mind breaking off in a fine passage—we can have that another time; but I could not endure a book more than thirty minutes, not even a newspaper, which, for diversity of contents, perhaps is the best kind of reading."
I accepted the conditions, and, finding a volume of Montaigne's Essays on a shelf, I took it down, and raised the question whether the old Gascon would be to my companion's taste. He replied in the affirmative, and declared his conviction that the art of essay-writing was lost, and that no essayist was comparable to Montaigne. So lively an author he could hear, he continued, with a good deal of enthusiasm, for the allotted time, with the greatest pleasure and without a yawn.
Fortunate in the selection of my author, I opened the volume without looking for any particular subject—for we both agreed that it was impossible to alight on a dull place—and commenced reading.
"Capital!" exclaimed my friend, in less than five minutes. "Capital! What a marvellous digestion that man must have had! You can see it in the clearness of his ideas! Let's see, he was before Galen, wasn't he? Go on, don't let me interrupt you; we will settle these points afterwards. Don't forget what just occurred to me about his digestion—it's important. You may not think so, ha! ha! but I know. Don't stop." And he composed himself as if for attentive listening, with his head thrown back in his chair, and his arms folded across his broad chest.