Gaveston took one, and told him. He had by now gathered that his new friend had already gone down some not inconsiderable time. Lord Vivian hardly looked so youthful as he had in that uncertain vaporous light underneath Jermyn Street, but still--the _bortsch_ was excellent, and the skilful host had ordered a _cuve_ of champagne, _Veuve Amiot_ of course. “Leave your _langouste_,” he went on, “and describe your friends.” Gaveston left it, and described them. The _escaloppes d’agneau_ gave place to some _épitaphes d’andouilles_ which justified their name. “Taste your _sorbet_,” said Vivian. They were on terms of Christian names by now. “And give me your thoughts on women.” Gaveston tasted it, and gave them. Seldom, he thought, had anyone found him quite so interesting. “Have another liqueur, Gavvy, and let me take you to Paris.” Gavvy had it, and let him. * * * * * “We ought to have flown across,” said Lord Vivian a trifle petulantly, as he closed the door of their state-room on the Calais packet. “I like the Channel,” said Gaveston. “I should hardly believe I were abroad unless I first had that faint emetic odour of engine oil on the boat.” “Delightful phantast!” laughed the peer. “But you’d be beautiful beyond even my dreams, Gav, suspended in the air betwixt the two most wonderful cities of the world. Not Gaveston, but Ganymede!” The brilliant pair exchanged their fascinating _ripostes_ throughout the journey. As soon as the white perfidious cliffs above Dover faded from their sight, they naturally fell into the French tongue. Both of course were perfect scholars in that languorous language: Vivian in fact was a past master of idiom: and both preferred when in _la belle France_ (as they wittily called it) to be taken for natives of that vivacious and volatile country. “_Est-ce que vous avez Français sang?_” asked Lord Vivian when he first realized how remarkable his young friend’s accent was. “_Qui sait?_” Gav had replied enigmatically. And so, what with _esprit_ and _persiflage_, _conte_ and shrug, it did not seem long ere the ambient vault of the Gare de Lyons had overarched their arrival with its Rhadamanthine gloom. * * * * * And then followed a passionate sequence of sleepless nights and sleepy days, while they visited all that there was of wicked and unvisited in the _Ville Lumière_, from multitudinous Montmartre to the quaint Quartier Latin, from Batignolles to Passy, from Nord to Sud. Where no other English had ever dared to penetrate, Vivian and Gaveston were often seen. The _Comédie Française_ and the _Folies Bergères_ grew to know them well, and thence they would pass from _café_ to _café_ and _bouillon_ to _bouillon_, savouring a wild succession of the most Parisian of _apéritifs_--Dubonnet and Byrrh, Maggi and Thermogene, and in the very darkest of the _cabarets_ of Montparnasse “_les deux Anglais_” became a familiar patchword.[15]