"I wouldn't quite say that," said Dick reflectively. "But you're partly right. All of a sudden the moon stopped whizzing, the river lay down in its bed, and my head became clear as a bell. 'The trouble will be,' I told myself, 'to find the hotel again.' But I had no trouble at all. My brain picked up bearing after bearing. I worked back up the street like a prize Baden-Powell scout, found the portico, remembered the stairway to the left, leading to the lounge, went up it, and recognising the familiar furniture, dropped into an armchair with a happy sigh. My only worry, as I picked up a copy of the _Gil Blas_ and began to study it, was about Jinks. But, you see, there wasn't much call to go searching after him when my own experience told me it would be all right. "There were, maybe, half a dozen men in the lounge, scattered about in the armchairs and smoking. By and by, glancing up from my newspaper, I noticed that two or three had their eyes fixed on me pretty curiously. One of them--an old boy with a grizzled moustache--set down his paper, and came slowly across the room. 'Pardon, monsieur,' he said in the politest way, 'but have we the honour of numbering you amongst our members?' 'Good Lord!' cried I, sitting up, 'isn't this the _Couronne d'Or?_' 'Pray let monsieur not discommode himself,' said he, with a quick no-offence sort of smile, 'but he has made a little mistake. This is the _Cercle Militaire_.' "I must say those French officers were jolly decent about it: especially when I explained about the Mont-Bazillac. They saw me back to the hotel in a body; and as we turned in at the porchway, who should come down the street but Jinks, striding elbows to side, like a man in a London-to-Brighton walking competition! . . . He told me, as we found our bedrooms, that '_of course_, he had gone up the hill, and that the view had been magnificent.' I did not argue about it, luckily: for--here comes in another queer fact--_there was no moon at all that night_. Next morning I wheedled two more bottles of the stuff out of old Sebillot--which leaves him two for the wedding. I thought that you and I might have some fun with them. . . . Now tell me _your_ experience." "That," said I, "must wait until you unlock my tongue; if indeed you have brought home the genuine Mont-Bazillac." As it happened, Master Dick was called up to Oxford unexpectedly, a week before the beginning of term, to start practice in his college "four." Our experiment had to be postponed; with what result you shall hear.