"My dear Baron, what an unexpected pleasure! I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read your note. So you have a stake in this musical speculation, and though it is very late, and, of course, everything at a disadvantage, I have to congratulate you on an immense success." The baron shrugs, shakes his head, and rolls his eyes dismally. "Ah, my friend, ze exbenses are enormous." "And the receipts still more so," says Longcluse cheerfully; "you must be making, among you, a mint of money." "Ah! Monsieur Longcluse, id is nod what it should be! zay are all such sieves and robbers! I will never escape under a loss of a sousand bounds." "You must be cheerful, my dear Baron. You shall dine with me to-day. I'll take you with me to half a dozen places of amusement worth seeing after dinner. To-morrow morning you shall run down with me to Brighton--my yacht is there--and when you have had enough of that, we shall run up again and have a whitebait dinner at Greenwich; and come into town and see those fellows, Markham and the other, that poor little Lebas saw play, the night he was murdered. You must see them play the return match, so long postponed. Next day we shall----" "Bardon, Monsieur, bardon! I am doo old. I have no spirits." "What, not enough to see a game of billiards between Markham and Hood! Why, Lebas was charmed so far as he saw it, poor fellow, with their play." "No, no, no, no, Monsieur; a sousand sanks, no, bardon, I cannod," says the baron. "I do not like billiards, and your friends have not found it a lucky game." "Well, if you don't care for billiards, we'll find something else," replies hospitable Mr. Longcluse. "Nosing else, nosing else," answers the baron hastily. "I hade all zese sings, ze seatres, ze bubbedshows, and all ze ozer amusements, I give you my oas. Did you read my liddle node?" "I did indeed, and it amused me beyond measure," says Longcluse joyously. "Amuse!" repeats the baron, "how so?" "Because it is so diverting; one might almost fancy it was meant to ask me for fifteen hundred pounds." "I have lost, by zis sing, a vast deal more zan zat." "And, my dear Baron, what on earth have I to do with that?" "I am an old friend, a good friend, a true friend," says the baron, while his fierce little eyes sweep the walls, from corner to corner, with quivering rapidity. "You would not like to see me quide in a corner. You're the richest man in England, almost; what's one sousand five hundred to you? I have not wridden to you, or come to England, dill now. You have done nosing for your old friend yet: what are you going to give him?" "Not as much as I gave Lebas," said Longcluse, eyeing him askance, with a smile. "I don't know what you mean." "Not a napoleon, not a franc, not a sou." "You are jesding; sink, sink, sink, Monsieur, what a friend I have been and _am_ to you."