Next, I bound up my finger I with my handkerchief, and then Colonel Bro entered. We exchanged greetings and, as I kept my hand in my pocket, nothing was noticed. Everyone came, and we set out without a single cry or movement, or sign of existence from the parroquet buried under the couch. When we reached Enghien, one of our party seemed to have his hand bandaged up like mine, and fellow-feeling opened up a current of sympathy between us. I asked him how he had met with his accident. A door had been violently shut by the wind just as he had his hand between it and the doorpost, and his fingers had been caught. As for myself, I simply told him I had cut myself with the flint of my gun; for in those days I still used a flint-gun for shooting. This sportsman who was maimed in the same hand as I was turned out to be the celebrated Doctor Ferrus. Directly he heard my name he asked me if I was the son of General Alexandre Dumas, and, on my replying in the affirmative, he related the story of the lifting of the four muskets with four fingers, that I gave on his authority in the early portion of these Memoirs. We had with us, too, among the shooters, a friend of Telleville Arnault--a man who was certainly one of the bravest, wittiest and most original people who ever breathed--Colonel Morrisel. He wore spectacles and looked anything but a colonel. He had just fought an unsuccessful duel which made more sensation than if it had come off successfully. In those days, there was a café called the café _Français_ in the rue Lafitte, which was the rallying-place of fashionable young men. The head waiter was a great billiard player named Changeur, and one night he was playing with a very young man, who found it necessary to take lessons at three francs the game, when M. le Baron de B---, accompanied by one of his friends, entered the establishment. M. le Baron de B was somewhat of a tricky character, and notorious, besides, because of two or three lucky or unlucky duels (according to the degree of philanthropy with which the reader may be endowed, and whether he think it fortunate or unfortunate to wound or kill his neighbour); he came up to the billiard-table and, without even addressing the young man, he said-- "Changeur, get us some coffee, and let us have the billiard-table." "Excuse me, Monsieur le Baron," said Changeur, in amazement, pointing to the young man, "but I am engaged in a game." "Well, then, you will stop the game, that's all." "Monsieur," said the young man timidly and politely, "we have only a few points more to make; in ten minutes the billiard-table will be at your service." "I am not asking for it in ten minutes, but at once.... Come, Changeur, come, my lad, give me your cue." Morrisel, who was already old, grey, thin, feeble, mean-looking and poverty-stricken in appearance, was taking a cup of coffee in a corner.