That was all I could get out of him, without allowing natural curiosity to outrun discretion. He changed the conversation to the war, to the France about which I, a very elderly Captain--have I not confessed to early twenties thirty years before?--was travelling most uncomfortably, doing queer odd jobs as a nominal liaison officer on the Quartermaster-General's staff. His intimacy with the country was amazing. Multiply Sam Weller's extensive and peculiar knowledge of London by a thousand, and you shall form some idea of Colonel Lackaday's acquaintance with the inns of provincial France. He could even trot out the family skeletons of the innkeepers. In this he became animated and amusing. His features assumed an actor's mobility foreign to their previous military sedateness, and he used his delicate hands in expressive gestures. In parenthesis I may say we had left the week-end party at their bridge or flirtation (according to age) in the drawing-room, neither pursuits having for us great attraction, in spite of Lady Auriol Dayne, of whom more hereafter, and we had found our way to cooling drinks and excellent cigars in our host's library. It was the first time we had exchanged more than a dozen words, for we had only arrived that Saturday afternoon. But after the amazing mutual recognition, we sat luxuriously chaired, excellent friends, and I, for my part, enjoying his society. "Ah!" said he, "Montélimar. I know that hotel. _Infect_. And the _patron_, eh? You remember him. Forty stone. Phoo!" The gaunt man sat up in his chair and by what mesmeric magic it happened I know not, but before my eyes grew the living image of the gross, shapeless creature who had put me to bed in wringing wet sheets. "And when you complained, he looked like this--eh?" He did look like that. Bleary-eyed, drooping-mouthed, vacant. I recollected that the fat miscreant had the middle of his upper lip curiously sunken into the space of two missing front teeth. The middle of Colonel Lackaday's upper lip was sucked in. "And he said: 'What would you have, Monsieur? _C'est la guerre?_'" The horrible fat man, hundreds of miles away from the front, with every convenience for drying sheets, had said those identical words. And in the same greasy, gasping tone. I gaped at the mimetic miracle. It was then that the memory of the eight-year-old child's travesty of myself flashed through my mind. "Pardon me," said I, "but haven't you turned this marvellous gift of yours to--well to practical use?" He grinned in his honest, wide-mouthed way, showing his incomparable teeth. "Don't you think," said he, "I'm the model of a Colonel of the Rifles?" He grinned again at the cloud of puzzlement on my face, and rose holding out his hand. "Time for turning in. Will you do me a favour? Don't give me away about the circus."