"What was it?" "Just imagine! I forgot my own name." "Bah!" exclaimed M. Bichet. "Your own name? Not your own name?" queried M. Pieyre. "Yes, my name, my very own name! It was at the marriage contract of ... what's his name ... you know, who married the daughter of so and so ...?" "How can I assist you on such slight information as that?" "Oh! dear, dear! the daughter of so and so ... who is my colleague at the Academy?... who writes comedies ... who wrote ... I cannot remember what it was.... A play that Mercier had already done; you know well enough?" "Alexandre Duval?..." "Yes, yes; it was at the signing of the contract of what's his name ... who married his daughter ... an architect ... who wrote a work on something ... that was burned ... in the eruption of Vesuvius, where somebody or other died...." "Oh, yes! Marois, who wrote a work on _Pompeii_, where Pliny died?" I hazarded timidly. "That is exactly it!... Thanks, monsieur." And he quietly stretched himself back in his arm-chair, after having first made me a gracious bow. "Well then," said M. Bichet, "come, now finish your story, my dear friend." "What story?" "Why, the story you were telling." "Was I telling a story?" "Of course," said M. Pieyre; "you were relating, my dear friend, that at the signing of the marriage contract of Marois, who has married the daughter of Alexandre Duval, you had forgotten your name." "Oh yes, true.... Well then, this was it. Everybody signed: then I said to myself, 'Now comes my turn to sign,' and I prepared to do so. I began to think what my name was and--the deuce! I couldn't remember it any longer! I thought I should be obliged to ask my neighbour what I was called, and how humiliating that would be to me. It was on the ground floor, and the door opened out on the garden. I hurried into the garden, striking my forehead and saying to myself, 'You rascal! you rascal! what is your name?' Yes, indeed, if I had but had to remember my name to save myself from being hanged I should have been hanged, right enough. Meanwhile my turn to sign had come, and people were searching for me. Alexandre Duval caught sight of me in the garden. 'Well, this is fine,' he said; 'there is that devil of a Parseval de Grandmaison overcome by a poetic seizure, just when he ought to be signing.... Here! Parseval de Grandmaison!' 'That is it,' I exclaimed, 'that is it: Parseval de Grandmaison! Parseval de Grandmaison! Parseval de Grandmaison!' and I went up to the table and signed." "That is just the scene needed in the _Distrait_," I said, smiling. "Yes, monsieur, you are quite right, it does need it; and if you wrote poetry I should say to you 'Add it.'" "But," M. Bichet interpolated, "he does write poetry, that was the very reason why you had him called in." "Ah, true, true!... Well then, young man, come, recite some of your lines to us." "Something out of your tragedy." "Ah! you are writing a tragedy?" "Yes, monsieur."