“What’s the matter with him?” “He partook too freely of the anchovies of the Chitchat last night. You will find that in French conversation books.” “I saw him indulging as I thought unwisely,” said Ealing. “Then it was surely imprudent of him to drink Moselle cup.” “He wished to drown care, but it only gave him a stomach-ache. Stewart impressed him so with the fact that we were all Atlases with the burden of the world on our shoulders, that he had recourse to the cup.” “And the burden of us all was on Stewart.” “Yes. Don’t you remember he said that he felt personally responsible for every undergraduate whom he had ever spoken to? His idea is that each don ought to have an unlimited influence, and that the whole future of England in the next generation lay on each of them, particularly himself. No wonder his eyelids were a little weary, as Mr. Pater says. But after you went he took the other side, and said that the undergraduates were the _raison d’être_ of the University, and that the dons existed only by their sufferance.” “Did Longridge stop?” “Yes. He was a little less coherent than usual. I know he took the case of a man at Oxford who threw stones at the deer in Magdalen, though what conclusion he drew from it, I can’t say.” “Probably that the deer were really responsible for the undergraduates.” The Babe sighed. “I have to read a paper next week. I think it shall be on some aspects of Longridge. That is sure to give rise to a discussion if he is there. Give me a cigarette, Reggie.” The Babe established himself in a big chair by the fireplace, while the others finished breakfast. “I am going to found a club,” he said, “called the S.C.D. or Society for the Cultivation of Dons. Stewart says he will be vice-president, as he doesn’t consider himself a don. We are going to call on obscure dons every afternoon and speak to them of the loveliness of life, for, as Stewart says, the majority of them have no conception of it. Their lives are bounded by narrow horizons, and the only glimpse they catch of the great world, is their bed-maker as she carries out their slop-pail from their bedrooms. They live like the Niebelungs in dark holes and eat roots, and though they are merely animals, they have no animal spirits. He says he knew a don once who by a sort of process of spontaneous combustion, became a dictionary, but all the interesting words, the sort of words one looks out in a Bible dictionary, you know, were missing. So they used him to light fires with, for which he was admirably adapted, being very dry, and in the manner of King Alexander, who, as Stewart asserted, became the bung in a wine cork, other dons now warm themselves at him. Stewart was very entertaining last night, and rather improper. He said that a Don Juan or two was wanted among the dons, by way of compensation, and he enlarged on the subject.” “Give us his enlargements.”