“Number one, you scratch the nose, as if to chase a fly; number two, you put your thumb in your mouth; number three—­”

“H’m!” said the professor doubtfully, “those are singular instructions, scratching the nose and sucking the thumb.  It strikes me they have been teaching you nursery signals rather than Masonry signals.”

[Illustration:  Beer-garden of the dauphin.]

“My good friend,” said the Scot with extreme politeness, yet not without dignity, “you cannot understand it, because you were not present.  I received a Light which burned my eyelashes.  The sage always examines a mystery before he decides upon it.  My Masonic friend will be here at breakfast to-day:  he promised me.  Only wait for him.  He can explain these things better than I, you will see.  The little experiments with our noses and thumbs, you understand, are symbols—­Thummim and Urim, or something of that kind.”

“Or else nonsense.  You have been quizzed, I fear.”

The North Briton bridled his head, knitted his brows and pushed back his chair; then, after a moment of pregnant and stormy silence, he turned suddenly around to me, who was enjoying the comedy—­“Hand me the cheese.”

To be taken for a waiter amused me.  Never in the world would a domestic have dared to present himself in a hotel habited as I was.  I was in the same clothes with which I had left Passy the morning previous:  my coat was peppered with dust, my linen bruised and dingy, my tie was nodding doubtfully over my right shoulder.  A waiter in my condition would have been kicked out without arrears of wages.

The professor, looking quickly around, recognized me with a ludicrous endeavor to relapse into the fiery and outraged patriot.  He expended his temper on the red nose.  “Take care whom you speak to,” he cried in a high, portly voice, and pointing to my japanned box, which I had slung upon a curtain-hook.  “Monsieur is not an attache of the house.  Monsieur is doubtless an herb-doctor.”

[Illustration:  Suckled in A creed outworn.]

There are charlatans who pervade the provincial parts of France, stopping a month at a time in the taverns, and curing the ignorant with samples according to the old system of simulacra—­prescribing kepatica for liver, lentils for the eyes and green walnuts for vapors, on account of their supposed correspondence to the different organs.  I settled my cravat at the mirror to contradict my resemblance to a waiter, threw my box into a wine-cooler to dispose of my identity with the equally uncongenial herbalist, and took a seat.  Nodding paternally to the coat of Prussian blue, I proceeded to order Bordeaux-Leoville, capon with Tarragon sauce, compote of nectarines in Madeira jelly—­all superfluous, for I was brutally hungry, and wanted chops and coffee; but what will not an unsupported candidate for respectability do when he desires to assert his caste?  I was proceeding to ruin myself in playing the eccentric millionaire when the door opened, giving entrance to a group of breakfasters.