"What the devil were you doing at the club at midnight and after," he asked me, "since you were not taking supper?"
"I was watching them play," I replied. "I left little Lautrec in a nice way. His losses were up among the sixty thousand"
Just as I uttered this sentence the coupé gave a jolt. I had a good view of Frémiot in profile, as he was lighting his cigarette, with that air of his, à la Francis the First,—the Francis of Titian in the Louvre,—the beauty of which his forty-five years, good measure, have only served to fill out, and, as it were, solidify. Is it not singular enough that with his shoulders of a life-guardsman, his redundancy of form and that mask of self-indulgent, almost gluttonous, sensuality, this giant is yet the most delicate, the most nicely appreciative of our painters of flowers? It is proper to add that the voice that issues from this gladiator's chest is most musically sweet, and his hands,—I took note of them afresh as they were manipulating the little taper and the cigarette,—are of a slenderness that is almost womanlike. Besides, I know by experience that this man-at-arms is a person of exquisite feeling, and I was not greatly astonished by the mournful confidence that my remarks about gambling had involuntarily elicited. There was abundant time, as it fortunately happened, for him to impart this confidence to me in all its details. As we approached the Seine the fog grew denser and our horses had to proceed at a walk, while my companion abandoned himself entirely to remembering, viva voce, for my benefit, a history that was now of very ancient date. Doubtless this impression of the past, to which the artist
