"That which you had was the original, not a copy. I have no copy of it from which I can replace it."
"But M'sieur will certainly have his notes, his private work, his first scheme?"
"None. I do not work in that way. There is not a scrap of paper relative to it anywhere."
Upon this the publisher rose, looked at me in a long silence, and then said in an icy tone,—
"Then M'sieur wishes me to understand that he does not intend to allow our firm to publish his work at all?"
I flushed at the insult his words contained. They practically intimated that he thought the whole thing an invention, and that I was going to give the MS. elsewhere. I got up too, and said—
"I have told you the MS. is destroyed, and I have no means of reproducing it, therefore it is impossible for it to be brought out by your or any other firm."
The man before me merely raised his shoulders over his ears, bowed, spread out the palms of his hands, raised his eyebrows, and muttered,—
"Comme vous voulez, M'sieur."
Confound him! was he a liar that he assumed me to be one. There was nothing to do but to bow and leave.