But it was necessary to know him as I knew him to understand the use of this smoking-room, which was destined by the fashionable author for show, for interviews and receptions. Its significant feature was order, implacable, studied and fastidious order. Everything displayed this order, but most of all the arrangement of the books on the book-shelves. The books themselves were all the work of young colleagues, who would be flattered by seeing their works bound in colours appropriate to their talents, the colourists in red, the elegists in mauve, and the stylists in Japanese paper. The brilliant new silver articles, the freshness of the Havanna carpet and many other little things showed the eye of a master difficult to please, whose wishes extended to the smallest detail without ever being satisfied. The conversation that the author had with me the previous evening concerning his investments came back to my mind, and I thought he had told me the truth. He himself entered, manicured, shaved, with keen eyes, a fresh colour, and wearing the most delightful lounge coat that ever a tailor of genius had made for a man about town. He had in his hand a quill pen which he showed me before throwing it into the fire, saying— “Have I kept you waiting? I had to finish my third page. If I do one page more by half-past twelve I shall have done my day’s work. Four pages a day, whether it is a novel or a play, is my method,” and pointing out to me a long row of books not so tastefully bound as the others: “And that is the result.” “Can you leave and resume your work when you please?” I asked him. “When I like. It is force of habit, you see. I have regulated my brain as a gas meter is regulated. Does the comparison scandalize you? You have, as I have done, meditated upon these words of a great master: 'Patience is that which in man most resembles the proceeding which nature employs in her creations.’ Almost automatic regularity is the secret of talent! But let us talk of your errand last evening to Camille. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, was there not?” “Not at all,” I replied, rather pleased at being able to disconcert his fatuity; “she did not even question me in order not to make me tell lies.” “Yes,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders, “that delicacy is just like her. We live in an amusing time. You meet with a woman of exquisite sentiment, and a delightfully fine heart. She turns out to be a poor little actress. Another woman with an income of 200,000 francs, coming of a good family, bearing a famous name, beautiful, and with a position in society, is a bad actress. But if the little one is romantic, she is shrewdly romantic. She had scruples about making you speak, so as not to ask you to betray a friend. Then she turned to the right place to learn the truth. She sent an express message to Fomberteau this morning.” “Did you not foresee that?”