"M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in absolute perfection; his mother, he tells me, was from Normandy--the daughter of fisherfolk in Dieppe; he was at school in Paris, and has lived there as an art student. "He does not care to talk about _Les Trépassées_ or _Les Étoiles_, or any of his immortal works. "He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do _la coupe_ properly; and leaning over his billiard-table he shows me how it ought to be done, and dilates on the merits of that mode of getting through the water. He confides to me that he suffers from a terrible nostalgia--a consuming desire to do _la coupe_ in the swimming-baths of Passy against the current; to take a header _à la hussarde_ with his eyes open and explore the bed of the Seine between Grenelle and the Île des Cygnes--as he used to do when he was a school-boy--and pick up mussels with his teeth. "Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his stove, which is almost entirely an invention of his own, and shows me how he can regulate the heat of the room to the fraction of a degree centigrade, which he prefers to Fahrenheit--just as he prefers metres and centimetres to inches and feet--and ten to twelve! "After this he performs some very clever tricks with billiard-balls; juggles three of them in each hand simultaneously, and explains to me that this is an exceptional achievement, as he only sees out of one eye, and that no acrobat living could do the same with one eye shut. "I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his face beams with honest satisfaction--and this is the man who wrote _La quatrième Dimension_! "Then he tells me some very funny French school-boy stories; he delights in my hearty laughter; they are capital stories, but I had heard them all before--when I was at school. "'And now, M. Josselin,' I say, 'à propos of that last story you've just told me; in the _Trépassées de François Villon_ you have omitted "la très-sage Héloïse" altogether.' "'Oh, have I? How stupid of me!--Abélard and all that! Ah well--there's plenty of time--nous allons arranger tout ça! All that sort of thing comes to me in the night, you know, when I'm half asleep in bed--a--a--I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I take my siesta.' "Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pencil studies from the life, things of ineffable beauty of form and expression--things that haunt the memory. "'Show me a study for Déjanire,' I say.