Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos broke upon this pleasing fancy by remarking again that Monsieur Saupiquet was a friend of Madame Brandt.

“He was with her at the time of her great bereavement.”

“Bereavement?” I asked forgetfully.

“Her horse Sultan.”

He whispered the words with solemn reverence.  I must confess to being tired of the horse Sultan and disinclined to treat his loss seriously.

“Monsieur Saupiquet,” said I, “doubtless offered her every consolation.”

“He used to travel with her and look after Sultan’s well-being.  He was her——­”

“Her Master of the Horse,” I suggested.

“Precisely.  You have the power of using the right word, Monsieur de Gex.  It is a great gift.  My good friend Saupiquet is attached to a circus at present stationed in Toulon.  He came over, at my request, to see me—­on affairs of the deepest importance”—­he waved the bundle of papers—­“the very deepest importance. Nicht wahr, Saupiquet?”

“Bien sur,” murmured Saupiquet, who evidently did not count loquacity among his vices.

I wondered whether these important affairs concerned the whereabouts of Captain Vauvenarde; but the dwarf’s air of mystery forbade my asking for his confidence.  Besides, what should a groom in a circus know of retired Captains of Chasseurs?  I said: 

“You’re a very busy man, Monsieur le Professeur.”

He tapped his domelike forehead.  “I am never idle.  I carry on here gigantic combinations.  I should have been a lawyer.  I can spread nets that no one sees, and then—­pst!  I draw the rope and the victim is in the toils of Anastasius Papadopoulos. Hast du nicht das bemerkt, Saupiquet?”

“Bien sur,” said Saupiquet again.  He seemed perfectly conversant with the dwarf’s polyglot jargon.

“To the temperament of the artist,” continued the modest Papadopoulos, “I join the intellect of the man of affairs and the heart of a young poet.  I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years of age.”

He jumped from his chair and struck an attitude of the Apollo Belvedere.

“I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered person like myself,” said I.

“The secret of youth,” he rejoined, sitting down again, “is enthusiasm, the worship of a woman, and intimate association with cats.”

Monsieur Saupiquet received this proposition without a gleam of interest manifesting itself in his dull blue eyes.  His broken nose gave his face a singularly unintelligent expression.  He poured out another glass of cognac from the graduated carafe in front of him and sipped it slowly.  Then he gazed at me dully, almost for the first time, and said: 

“Madame Brandt owes me fifteen sous.”