The Frenchman smiled with the amused, respectful sympathy which men of his race so often feel for their American contemporaries. "Well, and what did you do when you discovered this miraculous cold cream?" Mr. Hale laughed, a young, vigorous laugh which made his gray hair seem a paradox. "Well, you've guessed it. I threw a fit, first of all. I was taken off my feet, and I wouldn't be surprised if I acted like a cat over catnip. So I decided I'd better go away and cool off before I did anything rash. I bought a couple of pots and went back to the hotel to sleep on it. That's something I always try to do, Monsieur Portier, before I let myself in for a _big_ proposition; and I meant this to be big, all right. I wanted to see if that cold cream seemed as good after twenty-four hours as it did at first. Well, it did, and _then_ some! So I got the Swede porter at my hotel, who can talk some English, to go back with me. And I started in to ask the old fellow all about it. Right there I struck a difference. After the way I'd gone on, an American, when I went back the next day, would have been wondering what I was trying to take away from him; but my old friend was just as pleased as a mother is when you tell her she's got a pretty baby. In fact he reminded me of that, the way he talked. So glad to tell me all about it. I got the impression before he got through that it was a member of the family. I don't mean, of course, that he told me how he made it. I wouldn't have let him if he'd started to. But he told me everything else. To begin with, he told me that his folks have been pharmacists right there for more than a hundred years! _A hundred years_ in that little shop in that little street in that little town! I tell you, Monsieur Portier, I never can get used to the way your people stay put." The Frenchman looked grave. "Perhaps too much so, Mr. Hale." "Anyhow, he said they had the recipe, the first recipe for that cold cream in his great-grandfather's handwriting. He said there'd been some talk always in the family about its having come from his great-grandfather's father, who had sold toilet specialties to Marie Antoinette, the queen, you know. He said he himself didn't take much stock in that story because everybody in France, more or less, claimed to have a great-grandfather who'd had dealings with Marie Antoinette, but I just thought to myself what a good smart advertisement agency could do with that item ... you could see it on every billboard between New York and San Francisco ... 'Marie Antoinette's own cold cream, rediscovered recipe.' If you've been in America, you can imagine." "Yes," said the Frenchman, "I can imagine."