There happened to be resident in the town of Paris at the same time another gentleman, whose name was Newman; he also was young, he also was English, but whereas Mr. Bilbury was by genius a painter, Mr. Newman was by vocation an engineer. And while Mr. Bilbury would spend hours in the studio of a master whom (in common with the other students) he despised, Mr. Newman was continually occupied in playing billiards with his fellow students of engineering in the University. And while Mr. Bilbury was spending quite twelve hours a day in finding out how to make a picture look like a thing if you stood a long way off from it (which is the end and object of his school in Paris), Mr. Newman had already acquired the art of making a billiard ball come right back again towards the cue after it had struck its neighbour. Mr. Bilbury had learned how to sing in chorus with the other students songs relating in no way to pictorial excellence; Mr. Newman had learned to sing those songs peculiar to students of engineering, but relating in no way to applied physics. In a word, these two young gentlemen had never met. But one day Mr. Bilbury, going arm-in-arm with three friends towards the river, met upon the pavement of the Rue Bonaparte Mr. Newman in much the same posture, but accompanied by a rather larger bodyguard. It would have been astonishing to anyone little acquainted with the temper of students in the University, and indeed it _was_ astonishing both to Mr. Newman and to Mr. Bilbury, though they had now for some months been acquainted with the inhabitants of that strange corner of the universe, to see how this trifling incident provoked an altercation which in its turn degenerated into a vulgar quarrel. Each party refused to give way to the other, and the members of each began comparing the members of the other to animals of every kind such as the pig, the cow, and even certain denizens of the deep. In the midst of the hubbub Mr. Bilbury, not to be outdone in the racy vigour of youth, shouted at Mr. Newman (who for all he knew might have been a Russian revolutionary or a man from St. Cyr) an epithet which he had come across in the contemporary literature of the capital, and which he imagined to be of common exchange among the merry souls of the University. To his surprise--nay, to his alarm--a dead silence followed the use of this very humble and ordinary word. Mr. Newman, to whom it was addressed, was not indeed ignorant of its meaning (for it meant nothing in particular and was offensive), but was astonished at the gravity of those round him when the little epithet had been uttered. With a sense of surprise now far exceeding that of Mr. Bilbury he saw his companions draw themselves up stiffly, take off their eccentric felt hats with large sweeping gestures, and march him off as stiff as pokers, leaving the Bilbury group solemn with the solemnity of men who have a duty to perform.