flower now in my hand becomes in that climate a towering and sturdy plant, the tobacco plant.  The wild justice of those lawless savannahs uses it as a gibbet for the execution of criminals, whence the term ’Lynchburg tobacco.’  You cannot readily imagine the scale on which life expands.  It was formerly not necessary to be a great man there to have a hundred slaves.  For my part, sixty domestics sufficed me” (I regarded sternly the homoeopathist, who had taken me for a waiter):  “it was but a scant allowance, since my pipe alone took the whole time of four.”

“Oh,” said the Scotchman, “allow me to doubt.  I understand the distribution of blood among the planters, because I am a homoeopathist; but what could your pipe gain by being diluted among four men?”

“The first filled it, the second lighted it, the third handed it and the fourth smoked it.  I hate tobacco.”

The witticism appeared generally agreeable, and I laughed with the rest.  The cheerful philosopher in the gray coat passed out:  as he left the room, followed subserviently by his interlocutors, he bowed very pleasantly to me and shook hands with my guardian the engineer.

“You know him?” I said to the latter.

“Just as well as you,” he replied:  “is it possible you don’t recognize him?  It is Fortnoye.”

“What!  Fortnoye—­the Ancient of the wine-cellar at Epernay?”

“Certainly.”

“In truth it is the same jolly voice.  Then his white beard was a disguise?”

“What would you have?”

“I am glad he is the same:  I began to think the mystifiers here were as dangerous as those of the champagne country.  At any rate, he is a bright fellow.”

“He is not always bright.  A man with so good a heart as his must be saddened sometimes, at least with others’ woes, and he does not always escape woes of his own.”

This sentiment affected me, and irritated me a little besides, for I felt that it was in my own vein, and that it was I who had a right to the observation.  I immediately quoted an extract from an Icelandic Saga to the effect that dead bees give a stinging quality to the very metheglin of the gods.  We exchanged these remarks in crossing the vestibule of the hotel:  a carriage was standing there for my friend.

“I am sorry to leave you.  I have a meeting with a Prussian engineer about bridges and canals and the waterworks of Vauban, and everything that would least interest you.  I must cross immediately to Kehl.  I leave you to finish the geography of Strasburg.”

“I know Strasburg by heart, and am burning to get out of it.  I want to cross the Rhine, for the sake of boasting that I have set foot in the Baden territory.  By the by, how have I managed to come so far without a passport?”

“This did it,” said my engineer, tapping the tin box, which a waiter had restored to me in a wonderful state of polish.  “I put a plan or two in it, with some tracing muslin, and allowed a spirit-level to stick out.  You were asleep.  I know all the officials on this route.  I had only to tap the box and nod.  You passed as my assistant.  Nobody could have put you through but I.”