“Oh, the old thing,” said Westover.  “But I can’t speak for any except France, very well.”

“What’s their republic like, over there?  Ours?  See anything of it, how it works?”

“Well, you know,” said Westover, “I was working so hard myself all the time—­”

“Good!” Whitwell slapped his leg.  Westover saw that he had on long India-rubber boots, which came up to his knees, and he gave a wayward thought to the misery they would be on an August day to another man; but Whitwell was probably insensible to any discomfort from them.  “When a man’s mindin’ his own business any government’s good, I guess.  But I should like to prowl round some them places where they had the worst scenes of the Revolution, Ever been in the Place de la Concorde?” Whitwell gave it the full English pronunciation.

“I passed through it nearly every day.”

“I want to know!  And that column that they, pulled down in the Commune that had that little Boney on it—­see that?”

“In the Place Vendome?”

“Yes, Plass Vonndome.”

“Oh yes.  You wouldn’t know it had ever been down.”

“Nor the things it stood for?”

“As to that, I can’t be so sure.”

“Well, it’s funny,” said the philosopher, “how the world seems to always come out at the same hole it went in at!” He paused, with his mouth open, as if to let the notion have full effect with Westover.

The painter said:  “And you’re still in the old place, Mr. Whitwell?”

“Yes, I like my own house.  They’ve wanted me to come up here often enough, but I’m satisfied where I am.  It’s quiet down there, and, when I get through for the day, I can read.  And I like to keep my family together.  Cynthy and Frank always sleep at home, and Jombateeste eats with me.  You remember Jombateeste?”

Westover had to say that he did not.

“Well, I don’t know as you did see him much.  He was that Canuck I had helpin’ me clear that piece over on Lion’s Head for the pulp-mill; pulp-mill went all to thunder, and I never got a cent.  And sometimes Jackson comes down with his plantchette, and we have a good time.”

“Jackson still believes in the manifestations?”

“Yes.  But he’s never developed much himself.  He can’t seem to do much without the plantchette.  We’ve had up some of them old philosophers lately.  We’ve had up Socrates.”

“Is that so?  It must be very interesting.”

Whitwell did not answer, and Westover saw his eye wander.  He looked round.  Several ladies were coming across the grass toward him from the hotel, lifting their skirts and tiptoeing through the dew.  They called to him, “Good-morning, Mr. Whitwell!” and “Are you going up Lion’s Head to-day?” and “Don’t you think it will rain?”—­“Guess not,” said Whitwell, with a fatherly urbanity and an air of amusement at the anxieties of the sex which seemed habitual to him.  He waited tranquilly for them to come up, and then asked, with a wave of his hand toward Westover:  “Acquainted with Mr. Westover, the attist?” He named each of them, and it would have been no great vanity in Westover to think they had made their little movement across the grass quite as much in the hope of an introduction to him as in the wish to consult Whitwell about his plans.