Of Bibi himself it was equally futile to inquire.  There was one subject on which he would never touch—­his previous condition—­his past, before he came to be what we saw.  ’Yes, I am a gentleman.  I am Captain Kasghine.  I am a gentleman in allotropic form’; that was as much as I ever heard him say.  He enjoyed cloaking himself in mystery, he enjoyed the curiosity it drew upon him; but perhaps he had some remnants of pride, some embers of remorse, some little pain and shame, as well.

Of the other legends afloat, one ran to the effect that he had murdered his wife; a second, that he had poisoned the husband of a lady friend; a third, that he had shown the white feather in battle; a fourth, that he had cheated at cards.  Bibi would neither admit nor deny any of these imputations, nor would he manifest the faintest resentment when they were discussed in his presence.  He would parry them, smiling complaisantly:  and (if it be considered that they were all, as it turned out, abominably false) that seems to show better than anything else to what abysmal depths the man had sunk.  Perhaps it shows also, incidentally, how very heartless and unimaginative young people in the Latin Quarter used to be.  I have seen Bibi swagger; I have seen him sullen, insolent, sarcastic; I have seen him angry, I have heard him swear; but anything like honestly indignant I never saw him.

I remember one night in the Cafe de la Source, when Fil de Fer had been treating him to brandy and trying to get him to tell his story; I remember his suddenly turning his one eye in the direction of us men, and launching himself upon a long flight of rhetoric.  I can see him still—­his unwashed red hand toying with the stem of his liqueur-glass, or rising from time to time to push his hair from his forehead, over which it dangled in soggy wisps, while, in a dinner-table tone of voice, he uttered these somewhat surprising sentiments.

’You would be horrified, you others, lads of twenty, with your careers before you,—­you would be horrified if you thought it possible that you might end your days like Bibi, would you not?  You wish to walk a clean path, to prosper, to be respectable, to wear sweet linen, to die honoured, regretted.  And yet, believe me, we poor devils who fail, who fall, who sink to the bottom, we have our compensation.  We see vastly more of the realities of life than those do who succeed and rise to the top.  We have an experience that is more essential, more significant.  We get the real flavour of life.  We sweat in the mire; we drink the lees.  But the truth is in the mire; the real flavour is in the lees.  Oh, we have our compensation.  We wear rags, we eat scraps fit for dogs, we sleep under the arches of bridges.  We lie in gaols, we are hustled by the police, we are despised by all men.  If you offer us drink, and stop to gossip with us for a moment, you only do so to please yourselves with the spectacle of our infamy, our infirmity, our incongruity.