“I have no doubt on that point,” said my neighbor, gravely; “but our French wines are deceptive, Mr. Arbuthnot, and you might possibly suffer some inconvenience to-morrow.  You, as a medical man, should understand the evils of dyspepsia.”

“Dy—­dy—­dyspepsia be hanged,” I muttered, dreamily.  “Tell me, friend—­by the by, I forget your name.  Friend what?”

“Friend Pythias,” returned the stranger, drily.  “You gave me the name yourself.”

“Ay, but your real name?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“One name is as good as another,” said he, lightly.  “Let it be Pythias, for the present.  But you were about to ask me some question?”

“About old Cheron,” I said, leaning both elbows on the table, and speaking very confidentially.  “Now tell me, have you—­have you any notion of what he is like?  Do you—­know—­know anything about him?”

“I have heard of him,” he replied, intent for the moment on the pattern of his wine-glass.

“Clever?”

“That is a point upon which I could not venture an opinion.  You must ask some more competent judge.”

“Come, now,” said I, shaking my head, and trying to look knowing; “you—­you know what I mean, well enough.  Is he a grim old fellow?  A—­a—­griffin, you know!  Come, is he a gr—­r—­r—­riffin?”

My words had by this time acquired a distressing, self-propelling tendency, and linked themselves into compounds of twenty and thirty syllables.

My vis-a-vis smiled, bit his lip, then laughed a dry, short laugh.

“Really,” he said, “I am not in a position to reply to your question; but upon the whole, I should say that Dr. Cheron was not quite a griffin.  The species, you see, is extinct.”

I roared with laughter; vowed I had never heard a better joke in my life; and repeated his last words over and over, like a degraded idiot as I was.  All at once a sense of deadly faintness came upon me.  I turned hot and cold by turns, and lifting my hand to my head, said, or tried to say:—­

“Room’s—­’bominably—­close!”

“We had better go,” he replied promptly.  “The air will do you good.  Leave me to settle for our dinners, and you shall make it right with me by-and-by.”

He did so, and we left the room.  Once out in the open air I found myself unable to stand.  He called a fiacre; almost lifted me in; took his place beside me, and asked the name of my hotel.

I had forgotten it; but I knew that it was opposite the railway station, and that was enough.  When we arrived, I was on the verge of insensibility.  I remember that I was led up-stairs by two waiters, and that the stranger saw me to my room.  Then all was darkness and stupor.

CHAPTER X.

THE NEXT MORNING.

“Oh, my Christian ducats!” Merchant of Venice.

Gone!—­gone!—­both gone!—­my new gold watch and my purse full of notes and Napoleons!