“I have settled him now.”

Marillac leaned toward him with the meekness of a lamb that presents his head to the butcher, and sympathetically pressed his hands.

“O poet!” he continued, “do you not feel, as I do at the twilight hour and in the eventide, a vague desire for a sunny, perfumed, southern life?  Will you not bid adieu to this sterile country and sail away to a land where the blue sky is reflected in the blue sea?  Venice! the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs, Saint Mark!  Rome! the Coliseum and Saint Peter—­But I know Italy by heart; let us go instead to Constantinople.  I am thirsting for sultanas and houris; I am thirsting—­”

“Good gracious! why do you not drink if you are thirsty?”

“Gladly.  I never say no to that.  I scorn love in a nightcap; I adore danger.  Danger is life to me.

“I dote on silken ladders as long as Jacob’s, on citadels worth scaling; on moonlight evenings, bearded husbands, and all that sort of thing—­I would love a bed composed of five hundred poniards; you understand me, poet—­”

“I beg of you, do not make him drink any more,” said Gerfaut to the notary.

“You are right not to wish to drink any more, Octave, I was about to advise you not to.  You have already drunk to excess to-day, and I am afraid that it will make you ill; your health is so weak—­you are not a strong man like me.  Fancy, gentlemen, Monsieur le Vicomte de Gerfaut, a native of Gascony, a roue by profession, a star of the first magnitude in literature, is afflicted by nature with a stomach which has nothing in common with that of an ostrich; he has need to use the greatest care.  So we have him drink seltzer-water principally, and feed him on the white meat of the chicken.  Besides, we keep this precious phenomenon rolled up between two wool blankets and over a kettle of boiling water.  He is a great poet; I myself am a very great poet.”

“And I also, I hope,” said the notary.

“Gentlemen, formerly there were poets who wrote only in verse; nowadays they revel in prose.  There are some even who are neither prose nor verse writers, who have never confided their secret to anybody, and who selfishly keep their poetry to themselves.  It is a very simple thing to be a poet, provided you feel the indescribable intoxication of the soul, and understand the inexpressible afflatus that bubbles over in your large brain, and your noble heart throbs under your left breast—­”

“He is as drunk as a fool,” said M. de Camier, loud enough for him to hear.

“Old man,” said he, “you are the one who is drunk.  Besides the word drunk is not civil; if you had said intoxicated I should not have objected.”

Loud shouts of laughter burst forth from the party.  He threw a threatening glance around him, as if he were seeking some one upon whom to vent his anger, and, placing his hand upon his hip, assumed the pose of a bully.

“Softly, my good fellows!” said he, “if any of you pretend that I am drunk, I declare to him that he lies, and I call him a misantrophe, a vagabond, an academician!” he concluded, with a loud burst of laughter; for he thought that the jesters would be crushed by this last heavy weapon.