The surprise seemed to pass, at this point, from the face of the Scot to that of the Strasburger.  After reflecting a moment, “Really,” murmured he, “I recollect, in Cosmos—­But how, then, do you reach six parts of the globe?”

“Only count, professor:  Asia, one; Africa, two; Australia, three; Oceanica, four; North America, five; and South America, six.”

“You cut America in two?”

“Nature has taken that responsibility.  Each part of the world being necessarily an insulated continent, an enormous island, it is too much to ask me to confound the northern and southern continents of America, hung together by a thread—­a thread which messieurs the engineers”—­he bowed airily to my companion—­“have very probably severed by this time.”

The honest professor passed his hand over his forehead.  “The deuce!” he said.  “That is logic perhaps.  Still, sir, I think it is rather hardy in you to double America and annihilate Europe, when Europe discovered America.”

“The Europeans did not discover America,” replied the young philosopher.  “The Americans discovered Europe.”

The professor of geography remained stunned:  the homoeopathist gave utterance to a cry—­one of admiration, doubtless.

“An American colony was settled in Norway long before the arrival of Columbus in Santo Domingo:  who will contradict me when Humboldt says so?  Only read your Cosmos!”

“The dickens! prodigious! prodigious!” repeated the man of blue.  The young silver coat went on: 

[Illustration:  THE BLESSING OF THE BAB.]

“I have been three times around the world, professor.  The terrestrial globe was my only chart.  I have studied in their places its divisions, continents, capes and oceans; also the customs, politics and philosophies of its inhabitants.  I have a weakness for learning; I have caused myself to be initiated in all secret and philosophical societies; I have taken a degree from the Brahmans of Benares; I have received the accolade from the emir of the Druses; I have been instructed by the priests of the Grand Lama, and have joined the Society of Pure Illumination, the sole possessors of the Future Light.  I have just returned from Persia, where I received the blessing of the great Bab; and, like Solomon, I can say, Vanitas vanitatum!”

The red nose was by this time quite inflated and inflamed with disinterested pride.  The blue was crushed, but he made a final effort, as the silver-gray made his preparations to depart and adjusted his breakfast-bill.  “Pardon me, sir,” he said, with a little infusion of provincial pride.  “I am not a cosmopolitan, a Constantinopolitan or a Babist.  But I enjoy your conversation, and am not entirely without the ability to sympathize in your geographical calculations.  I am preparing at the present moment a small treatise on Submarine Geography; I am conducting, if that gives me any right to be heard, the geographical department in the chief gymnasium here:  in addition, my youngest sister lost her ulnar bone by the explosion of an obus in the seminary on the night of August 18th, when six innocent infants were killed or maimed by the Prussians, who put a bomb in their little beds like a warming-pan.”