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Page 4
Fitzgerald smiled. "You are an enthusiast like myself."
"Who wouldn't be who has, visited every battlefield, who has spent days
wandering about Corsica, Elba, St. Helena? But you?"
"My word, I have done the same things."
They exchanged smiles.
"What written tale can compare with this living one?" continued
Breitmann, his eyes brilliant, his voice eager and the tone rich. "Ah!
How many times have I berated the day I was born! To have lived in
that day, to have been a part of that bewildering war panorama; from
Toulon to Waterloo! Pardon; perhaps I bore you?"
"By George, no! I'm as bad, if not worse. I shall never forgive one
of my forebears for serving under Wellington."
"Nor I one of mine for serving under Bl�cher!"
They laughed aloud this time. It is always pleasant to meet a person
who waxes enthusiastic over the same things as oneself. And Fitzgerald
was drawn toward this comparative stranger, who was not ashamed to
speak from his heart. They drifted into a long conversation, and
fought a dozen battles, compared this general and that, and built idle
fancies upon what the outcome would have been had Napoleon won at
Waterloo. This might have gone on indefinitely had not the patient
attendant finally dandled his keys and yawned over his watch. It was
four o'clock, and they had been talking for a full hour. They
exchanged cards, and Fitzgerald, with his usual disregard of
convention, invited Breitmann to dine with him that evening at the
Meurice.
He selected a table by the window, dining at seven-thirty. Breitmann
was prompt. In evening clothes there was something distinctive about
the man. Fitzgerald, who was himself a wide traveler and a man of the
world, instantly saw and was agreeably surprised that he had asked a
gentleman to dine. Fitzgerald was no cad; he would have been just as
much interested in Breitmann had he arrived in a cutaway sack. But
chance acquaintances, as a rule, are rudimental experiments.
They sat down. Breitmann was full of surprises; and as the evening
wore on, Fitzgerald remembered having seen Breitmann's name at the foot
of big newspaper stories. The man had traveled everywhere, spoke five
languages, had been a war correspondent, a sailor in the South Seas,
and Heaven knew what else. He had ridden camels and polo ponies in the
Soudan; he had been shot in the Greece-Turkish war, shortly after his
having met Fitzgerald; he had played a part in the recent
Spanish-American, and had fought against the English in the Transvaal.
"And now I am resting," he concluded, turning his chambertin round and
round, giving the effect of a cluster of rubies on the table linen.
"And all my adventures have been as profitable as these," indebted for
the moment to the phantom rubies. "But it's all a great stage, whether
you play behind the wings or before the lights. I am thirty-eight;
into twenty of those years I have crowded a century."
"You don't look it."
"Ah, one does not need to dissipate to live quickly. The life I have
led has kept me in health and vigor. But you? You are not a man who
travels without gaining material."
"I have had a few adventures, something like yours, only not so widely
diversified. I wrote some successful short stories about China once.
I have had some good sport, too, here and there."
"You live well for a newspaper correspondent," suggested Breitmann,
nodding at the bottle of twenty-eight-year-old Burgundy.
"Oh, it's a habit we Americans have," amiably. "We rough it for a few
months on bacon and liver, and then turn our attention to truffles and
old wines and Cabanas at two-francs-fifty. We are collectively, a good
sort of vagabond. I have a little besides my work; not much, but
enough to loaf on when no newspaper or magazine cares to pay my
expenses in Europe. Anyhow, I prefer this work to staying home to be
hampered by intellectual boundaries. My vest will never reach the true
proportions which would make me successful in politics."
"You are luckier than I am," Breitmann replied. He sipped his wine
slowly and with relish. How long was it since he had tasted a good
chambertin?
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