“It is easy enough to explain,” said Rouvière, sitting up straight in his chair and becoming very animated and somewhat loud as he proceeded. “I began life with ten thousand francs a year in land; my first operation was to change my patrimony into bank-notes, by which means I doubled my income; then I invested it in the sinking funds, which trebled it. And then, freed from every narrow calculation, from every family tie, from every social trammel, I took my flight into space! Here’s to your health, my old friend George! Hip! hip! hurrah!” “What a wonderful fellow!” cried George in a paroxysm of admiration, excited, very probably, much more by the brandy and the rum and the punch than by Rouvière’s comprehension of life and happiness. “What energy! what grandeur!” “I consecrated my youth,” continued Tom in a declamatory style, “to distant adventures, reserving Europe for the autumn of life. My foot—this foot, this very foot, George, which now touches yours on this carpet—has left its print among those of the tiger and the elephant on the sands of India! Nay, it has even followed those terrible prowlers into their forests of bamboo, lofty and solemn as our cathedrals!” “Ah! that was something like living!” ejaculated Dupuis, who listened with almost breathless interest. “Two years later I arrived in Canton. What an arrival, ye gods! Never shall I forget the scene. It was a lovely summer night. The accession of the emperor of the Celestials to his ancestral throne was being celebrated. Our canoe could scarcely force its way among the junks and flower-boats, all of them decorated with innumerable paper lanterns. Fireworks of a thousand different hues were reflected, mingled with the stars, in the flowing river, and we could watch their rainbow tints playing on the porcelain temples that rise on its banks!” “What a fairy-like sight! Happy, happy Tom!” murmured Dupuis. “From China,” pursued Rouvière, after quaffing off his glass of punch, “I sailed for the Americas. I travelled about there for several years, going to and fro, from north to south, from the savannas to the pampas, from the great austere Canadian woods to the smiling Brazilian forests; sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, oftenest in a _pirogue_. My longest stay was in Peru. I could not tear myself away from that coquettish city of Lima!” “Ha! ha! _traître_, gay deceiver! O Tom, Tom!” laughed Dupuis, shaking his head in ecstasy.