The Scotchman looked like him who digesteth a pill. I decided quickly on my own rôle, and briskly joined the conversation. Fishing up my botany-box and extracting the little flower, "Nothing is more likely when you know the country," I observed. "I have lived in Florida, gentlemen, where I undertook, as Comparative Geographer and as amateur botanist" (I looked searchingly at the professor, who had called me an herb-doctor), "to fix the location of Ponce de Leon's fountain and observe the medicinal plants to which it owes its virtue. America, I must explain to you, is a country where proportions are greatly changed. The pineapple tree there grows so very tall that it is impossible from the ground to reach the fruit. This little flower now in my hand becomes in that climate a towering and sturdy plant, the tobacco plant. The wild justice of those lawless savannahs uses it as a gibbet for the execution of criminals, whence the term 'Lynchburg tobacco.' You cannot readily imagine the scale on which life expands. It was formerly not necessary to be a great man there to have a hundred slaves. For my part, sixty domestics sufficed me" (I regarded sternly the homoeopathist, who had taken me for a waiter): "it was but a scant allowance, since my pipe alone took the whole time of four." "Oh," said the Scotchman, "allow me to doubt. I understand the distribution of blood among the planters, because I am a homoeopathist; but what could your pipe gain by being diluted among four men?" "The first filled it, the second lighted it, the third handed it and the fourth smoked it. I hate tobacco." The witticism appeared generally agreeable, and I laughed with the rest. The cheerful philosopher in the gray coat passed out: as he left the room, followed subserviently by his interlocutors, he bowed very pleasantly to me and shook hands with my guardian the engineer. "You know him?" I said to the latter. "Just as well as you," he replied: "is it possible you don't recognize him? It is Fortnoye." "What! Fortnoye--the Ancient of the wine-cellar at Épernay?" "Certainly." "In truth it is the same jolly voice. Then his white beard was a disguise?" "What would you have?" "I am glad he is the same: I began to think the mystifiers here were as dangerous as those of the champagne country. At any rate, he is a bright fellow." "He is not always bright. A man with so good a heart as his must be saddened sometimes, at least with others' woes, and he does not always escape woes of his own." This sentiment affected me, and irritated me a little besides, for I felt that it was in my own vein, and that it was I who had a right to the observation. I immediately quoted an extract from an Icelandic Saga to the effect that dead bees give a stinging quality to the very metheglin of the gods. We exchanged these remarks in crossing the vestibule of the hotel: a carriage was standing there for my friend.