Defouqueblize quitted his chair with a lumbering effort. Together they tottered down the corridor towards the compartment where the professor had left his brief-bag. Defouqueblize went in first. Lafcadio settled him in his corner and took his leave. He had already turned his back to go out, when a great hand fell heavily on his shoulder. He turned swiftly round. Defouqueblize had sprung to his feet--but was it really Defouqueblize?--this individual who, in a voice that was at once mocking, commanding and jubilant, exclaimed: “You mustn’t desert an old friend like this, Mr. Lafcadio. What-the-deuceki. No? Really? Trying to make off?” There remained not a trace of the tipsy, uncanny old professor of a moment ago in this great strapping stalwart fellow in whom Lafcadio no longer hesitated to recognise--Protos--a bigger, taller, stouter Protos who gave an impression of formidable power. “Ah! it’s you, Protos?” said he, simply. “That’s better. I didn’t recognise you till this minute.” For however terrible the reality might be, Lafcadio preferred it to the grotesque nightmare in which he had been struggling for the last hour. “Not badly got up, was I? I’d taken special pains for your sake. But all the same, my dear fellow, it’s you who ought to take to spectacles. You’ll get into trouble if you’re not cleverer than that at recognising ‘the slim.’” What half-forgotten memories this catchword _the slim_ aroused in Cadio’s mind! The _slim_, in their slang, at the time Protos and he were schoolboys together, were a genus who, for one reason or another, did not present to all persons and in all places the same appearance. According to the boys’ classification, there were many categories of the “slim,” more or less elegant and praiseworthy; and answering to them and opposed to them, was the single great family of “the crusted,” whose members strutted and swaggered through every walk of life, high or low. Our schoolfellows accepted the following axioms: 1. The slim recognise each other. 2. The crusted do not recognise the slim. All this came back to Lafcadio; as his nature was to throw himself into the spirit of the game, whatever it might be, he smiled. Protos went on: