“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she playfully rejoined, and the artist in him registered for future use her rich Olympian vocabulary, “you _wrote_ it, Master, anyhow. We’ve all been young once. Take me, and we’ll both be young again,” she gave it him straight, “together.” Ah, then the woman _was_ dangerous. Scratchem gossip had, for once, not overshot the mark. He would show her, all Olympian though she was, that giving it straight was a game two could play at. “Dear lady,” he said, “you’re wonderful. But I won’t take you. What’s more, I’m not”—and he had it to himself surprisingly ready—“taking _any_.” M. BERGERET ON FILM CENSORING A late October sun of unusual splendour lit up the windows of M. Paillot’s bookshop, at the corner of the Place Saint-Exupère and the Rue des Tintelleries. But it was sombre in the back region of the shop where the second-hand book shelves were and M. Mazure, the departmental archivist, adjusted his spectacles to read his copy of _Le Phare_, with one eye on the newspaper and the other on M. Paillot and his customers. For M. Mazure wished not so much to read as to be seen reading, in order that he might be asked what the leading article was and reply, “Oh, a little thing of my own.” But the question was not asked, for the only other _habitué_ present was the Lecturer in Latin at the Faculty of Letters, who was sad and silent. M. Bergeret was turning over the new books and the old with a friendly hand, and though he never bought a book for fear of the outcries of his wife and three daughters he was on the best of terms with M. Paillot, who held him in high esteem as the reservoir and alembic of those humaner letters that are the livelihood and profit of booksellers. He took up Vol. XXXVIII. of “L’Histoire Générale des Voyages,” which always opened at the same place, p. 212, and he read:— “ver un passage au nord. ‘C’est à cet échec, dit-il, que nous devons n’avoir pu visiter les îles Sandwich et enrichir notre voyage d’une découverte qui....’” For six years past the same page had presented itself to M. Bergeret, as an example of the monotony of life, as a symbol of the uniformity of daily tasks, and it saddened him. At that moment M. de Terremondre, president of the Society of Agriculture and Archæology, entered the shop and greeted his friends with the slight air of superiority of a traveller over stay-at-homes. “I’ve just got back from England,” he said, “and here, if either of you have enough English to read it, is to-day’s _Times_.”