“He’s a kind of human firework,” said I, “and his name is Aristide Pujol.”
I sketched the man—in my desire to do a good turn to Aristide, perhaps in exaggerated colour.
“Let me have a look at him,” said Blessington.
“He may be anywhere on the continent of Europe,” said I. “How long can you give me to produce him?”
“I’ll do my best,” said I.
By good luck my telegram, sent off about four o’clock, found him at 213 bis Rue Saint-Honoré. He had just returned to Paris after some mad dash for fortune (he told me afterwards a wild and disastrous story of a Russian Grand-Duke, a Dancer and a gold mine in the Dolomites) and had once more resumed the dreary conduct of the Agence Pujol at the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse. My summons being imperative, he abandoned the Agence Pujol as a cat jumps off a wall, and, leaving the guests of the Hotel guideless, to the indignation of Monsieur Bocardon, whom he had served this trick several times before, paid his good landlady, Madam Bidoux, what he owed her, took a third-class ticket to London, bought, lunatic that he was, a ripe Brie cheese, a foot in diameter, a present to myself, which he carried in his hand most of the journey, and turned up at my house at eight o’clock the next morning with absolutely empty pockets and the happiest and most fascinating smile that ever irradiated the face of man. As a matter of fact, he burst his way past my scandalized valet into my bedroom and woke me up.
“Here I am, my dear friend, and here is something French you love that I have brought you,” and he thrust the Brie cheese under my nose.
“— — —,” said I.
If you were awakened by a Brie cheese, an hour before your time, you would say the same. Aristide sat at the foot of the bed and laughed till the tears ran down his beard.