[Illustration:  Cathedral of Meaux.]

I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox.  I set up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in any company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out “Paul!” through the doorway, six husbands at least would start and say, “Coming, dear!” I computed the Pauls belonging to one of the grand nations, and proved that an army recruited from them would be large enough to carry on a war against a power of the second order.

“If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls,” I declared, looking toward my young host, “Russia itself would tremble.—­Are you to make your start in life with no better name?” I asked him maliciously.  “Must you be for ever kept in mediocrity by an address that is not the designation of an individual, but of a whole nation?  Could you not have been called by something rather less oecumenical?”

“You may style me by what title you please, Mr. Flemming,” said Grandstone nonchalantly.  “I am to enter a great New York wine-house after a little examination of the grape-country here.  Doubtless a Grandstone will have, by any other name, a bouquet as sweet.”

The idea took.  An almanac of saints’ days, which is often printed in combination with the menu of a restaurant, was lying on the table.  Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose was within an ace of being chosen, but Grandstone protested against it as too short, and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that presented.  Our engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket a vial of water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships’ bottoms; and with that classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the bottle being broken on poor Grandstone’s crown as on the prow of a ship.

“You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius,” I said.  “If you remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you.  Meantime, let us vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint Athanasius and hold a love-feast.”

We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next day I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas.  And my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to the rude reminder given by my engineer.

“I had quite forgotten my engagement,” I confessed.  “Besides, Grandstone is living now, as you remind me, at Epernay—­that is to say, at seventy or eighty miles’ distance.”

“Say three hours,” he retorted:  “on a railway line we don’t count by miles.  But are you really not here at Noisy to satisfy your promise and report yourself for the feast of Saint Athanasius?  If you are not bound for Epernay, where are you bound?”

“I am off for Marly.”

“You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow.  You can be at Epernay sooner.”

“And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow,” I continued, rather helplessly; “and Josephine my cook is there this afternoon boiling the mutton-hams.”