We assured him that he had not been noisy enough.  “You’re laughing at me,” he answered.  “Surely I’ve been talking all the time!”

“Mon Dieu!” said Jules, “we have been looking for some fables of your wars; but nothing—­nothing, not enough to feed a frog!”

The old fellow looked troubled.

“To be sure!” he mused.  “Let me think! there is that about Colhoun at Gettysburg; and there’s the story of Garibaldi and the Miller.”  He plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have been extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way he stopped and commented.  “So you see,” he ended, “that’s the sort of man Garibaldi was!  I could tell you another tale of him.”  Catching an introspective look in Jules’s eye, however, I proposed taking our cigars over to the cafe opposite.

“Delightful!” the old fellow said:  “We shall have a band and the fresh air, and clear consciences for our cigars.  I cannot like this smoking in a room where there are ladies dining.”

He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.  Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me, “Mon cher Georges, how he is good!” then sighed, and added darkly:  “The poor man!”

We sat down at a little table.  Close by, the branches of a plane-tree rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the breasts of birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the breeze, fluttered suddenly.

The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face, coming now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee, answer our questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing.  The ash of his cigar grew very long.  One of those bizarre figures in Oriental garb, who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at a great price, appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a furtive smile at his face, and glided back, discomfited by its unconsciousness.  It was a night for dreams!  A faint, half-eastern scent in the air, of black tobacco and spice; few people as yet at the little tables, the waiters leisurely, the band soft!  What was he dreaming of, that old fellow, whose cigar-ash grew so long?  Of youth, of his battles, of those things that must be done by those who try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his dinner; anyway of something gilded in vague fashion as the light was gilding the branches of the plane-tree.

Jules pulled my sleeve:  “He sleeps.”  He had smilingly dropped off; the cigar-ash—­that feathery tower of his dreams—­had broken and fallen on his sleeve.  He awoke, and fell to dusting it.

The little tables round us began to fill.  One of the bandsmen played a czardas on the czymbal.  Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat down at the adjoining table.  They were discussing the lady who had been at the concert that afternoon.

“It’s a bet,” said one of them, “but there’s the present man.  I take three weeks, that’s enough ’elle est declassee; ce n’est que le premier pas—­’”