“Even to walk,” he gasped, “that discomposes me, as you see.  It is terrible.”

“Take it easy,” counseled Cobb.

An aproned waiter served them, Cobb with beer, Savinien with a treacly liqueur in a glass the size of a thimble.  When he was a little restored from his exertions, he laid his arm on the table, with the little glass held between his thumb and forefinger, and remained in this attitude.

“Go ahead,” said Cobb.  “Tell me why you are distributing watches to the deserving poor in this manner.”

“It is not benevolence,” replied Savinien.  “It is simply that I have a need of some misfortune to balance things.”

There was a muffled quality in his voice, as though it were subdued by the bulk from which it had to emerge; but his enunciation was as clean and dexterous as in the days when he had made a vogue for his poems by reading them aloud.  It was the voice of a poet issuing from the mouth of a glutton.

“To balance things,” he repeated.  “Fortune, my dear Cobb, is a pendulum; the higher it rises on the side of happiness, the further it returns on the side of disaster.  And with me, who cannot take your arm for a promenade along the pavement without a tightness in the neck and a flutter of my heart, who may not go upstairs quicker than a step a minute, disaster has only one shape.  It arrives and I am extinguished!  It is for that reason that I fear a persistence of good luck.  Of late, the luck that dogs me has been incredible.

“Listen, now, to this!  Three days ago, being in a difficulty, I go in search of Rigobert.  You know Rigobert, perhaps?”

“Yes,” said Cobb.  “That is, I have lent him money!”

“Precisely,” agreed Savinien.  “The sum which he owed me was no more than two hundred and fifty francs but I had not much hope of him.  I went leisurely upon the way towards his studio, and at the corner by the Madeleine I entered the post office to obtain a stamp for a letter I had to send.  The first thing which I perceived as I opened the door was the back of Rigobert, as he sprawled against the counter, signing his name upon a form while the clerk counted out money to him.  Hundred franc notes, my friend—­noble new notes, ten in number, a thousand francs in all, which Rigobert received for his untidy autograph upon a blue paper.  As for me, I planted myself there at his back in an attitude of expectancy and determination to await his leisure.  He was cramming the money into his trousers pocket as he turned round and beheld me.  He was embarrassed.  He, the universal debtor, the bottomless pit of loans and obligations, to be discovered thus.

“You!” he exclaimed.

“I!” I replied, and took him very firmly by the arm and mentioned my little affair to him.  He was not pleased, Rigobert, but for the moment he was empty of excuses.  When he suggested that we should go to a cafe, to change one of the notes, that he might pay me my two hundred and fifty, I agreed, for I had him by the arm, but I could see that he was gathering his faculties, and I was wary.  A bon rat bon chat!