I came upon Bertram by accident by the Montmartre cemetery, whither I had been with a friend to look at a new-made grave.  As I have observed, Bertram had reached a very low ebb.  He avoided his old thoroughfares.  He had discovered that all the backs of the Tuileries chairs were towards him.  Miss Tayleure had had her revenge before she left.  He had heard that “the fellows were sorry for him,” and that they were not anxious to see him.  The very waiters in his cafe knew that evil had befallen him, and were less respectful than of old.  No very damaging tales, as I have said, were told against him; but it was made evident to him that Paris society had had enough of him for the present, and that his comfortable plan would be to move off.

Cosmo Bertram had moved off accordingly; and when I met him at Montmartre he had not been heard of for many months.  I should have pushed on, but he would not let me.  A man in misfortune disarms your resentment.  When the friend who has been always bright and manly with you, approaches with a humble manner, and his eyes say to you, while he speaks, “Now is not the time to be hard,” you give in.  I parted with my fellow-mourner, and joined Bertram, saying coldly—­“We have not met, Bertram, for many months—­it seems years.  What has happened?”

The man’s manner was completely changed.  He talked to me with the cowed manner of a conscious inferior.  He was abashed; as changed in voice and expression as in general effect.

“Ruin—­nothing more,” he answered me.

“Baden—­Homburg, I suppose?”

“No; tomfoolery of every kind.  I’m quite broken.  That friend of yours didn’t recognise me, did he?”

“Had never seen you before, I’m quite sure.”

I took him into a quiet cafe and ordered breakfast.  His face and voice recalled to me all the Daker story; and I felt that I was touching another link in it.  He avoided my eye.  He grasped the bottle greedily, and took a deep draught.  The wine warmed him, and loosed “the jesses of his tongue.”  He had a long tale to tell about himself!  He disburdened his breast about Clichy; of all the phases of his decline from the fashionable man in the Bois to the shabby skulker in the banlieue, he had something to say.  He had been everybody’s victim.  The world had been against him.  Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had acted meanly.  Nobody could imagine half his sufferings.  While he dwelt on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that interested me much more deeply than his; and in which I had good reason to suspect he had not borne an honourable part.  The gossips had confirmed the fears which Mrs. Daker had created.  I had picked up scraps here and there which I had put together.

“I am obliged to keep very dark, my dear Q.M.,” Bertram said at last, still dwelling on the inconvenience to himself.  “Hardly dare to move out of the quarter.  Disgusting bore.”