It was the new game of "Beaver," popular that summer in England, which Lewis, an anglomaniac Frenchman, had imported into France. A society game. Each beard met with, or caught sight of, counted one point: the same scoring as at lawn tennis, fifteen, thirty, forty and game. The winner was the man who saw the greatest number of beards first. It was played at Ascot, in the Temple, at Lords, in omnibuses. The game of "Beaver" became so intense that at a Royal Garden Party Lewis had noticed subjects of the King in whom the zest for the game outweighed the respect due to sovereigns, and who even whilst making their bow mentally credited themselves with the Royal Beard. Certain champions with a practised eye scored with incredible rapidity, even amongst crowds to all appearances clean shaven. Just think then of Sunday round the bandstands of French provincial towns where beards, perfumed with verbena or tobacco juice, are still cultivated, and where on some of the benches entire games can be won at a single stroke! Robust and full of life, the heirs in a blaze of candle-light, the Board of Directors and all the lesser employés of the Franco-African Bank abandoned themselves to their grief. Business men embarrassed by being brought face to face with nothingness at an hour when typewriters are usually clicking; bored society people turning their backs to the altar and scanning the assembly. Everything went off in perfect order. One felt that at the hour ordained by God certain important fractions of middle-class wealth and fat dividends had slipped from the strong room of the deceased to that of the beneficiaries, without any fuss and without attracting the attention of the Treasury or the envy of subordinates. A transfer of accounts amid sobs was all that was necessary. One was reminded that a hundred years before this church of La Madeleine, in which they were, had so nearly been a bank. "Beaver and game," said Lewis at the sudden thought that close beside him in the coffin a thick white curling beard was still sprouting. If, as happens in some countries, the corpse had lain with its face uncovered, no one could have denied Lewis a brilliant win. The dead man, Monsieur Vandémanque, had been one of those ornamental and costly old idols secured to the pediments of our financial concerns, whose number increases uselessly with the increase of capital and who are exhibited once a year before the eyes of the shareholders, whom the sight of so much age reassures instead of alarming them--heaven only knows why. One of those men who collect soup tureens of the East India Company, know the Æneid by heart, have never seen a bill of exchange, are possessed of savage vanity and greed whilst all the time morbidly grabbing their directors' fees, and appear outwardly to us as greedy children either snivelling or sucking at the shrivelled udder of their dividends in their sleep.