He came up to me, his face more wan looking even than usual. The boat was moving a little, my departure terrified him, and the wind caused him to plunge from right to left. He made a mysterious sign to me and I followed him, accompanied by _ma petite dame_ and leaving my friends, who were inclined to be ironical, behind. When I was seated, he opened the case and took out an enormous life belt invented by himself. I was perfectly astounded, for I was unused to sea voyages, and the idea had never even occurred to me that we might be shipwrecked during one hour’s crossing. “La Quenelle” was by no means disconcerted, and he put the belt on himself in order to show me how it was used. Nothing could have looked more foolish than this man with his sad, serious face, putting on this apparatus. There were a dozen egg-sized bladders round the belt, eleven of which were filled with air and contained a lump of sugar each. In the twelfth, a very small bladder, were ten drops of brandy. In the middle of the belt was a tiny cushion with a few pins on it. “You understand,” he said to me. “You fall in the water _paff_—you stay like this.” Hereupon he pretended to sit down, rising and sinking with the movement of the waves, his two hands in front of him laid upon the imaginary sea, and his neck stretched like that of a tortoise in order to keep his head above water. “You see, you have now been in the water for two hours,” he explained, “and you want to get back your strength. You take a pin and prick an egg, like this. You take your lump of sugar and eat it, that is as good as a quarter of a pound of meat.” He then threw the broken bladder overboard, and from the packing case brought out another, which he fastened to the life belt. He had evidently thought of everything. I was petrified with amazement. A few of my friends had gathered round, hoping for one of “La Quenelle’s” mad freaks, but they had never expected anything like this one. M. Mayer, one of our _impresarios_, fearing a scandal of too absurd a kind, dispersed the people who were gathering round us. I did not know whether to be angry or to laugh, but the jeering, unjust speech of one of my friends roused my pity for this poor “Quenelle.” I thought of the hours he had spent in planning, combining, and then manufacturing his ridiculous machine. I was touched by the anxiety and affection which had prompted the invention of this life-saving apparatus, and I held out my hand to my poor “Quenelle,” saying: “Be off, now, quickly, the boat is just going to start.” He kissed the hand held out to him in a friendly way, and hurried off. I then called my steward Claude, and I said, “As soon as we are out of sight of land throw that case and all it contains into the sea.” The departure of the boat was accompanied by shouts of “Hurrah! _Au revoir!_ Success! Good luck!” There was a waving of hands, handkerchiefs floating in the air, and kisses thrown haphazard to everyone.