"Ah! mon Général, delighted to see you," said Payot, with a beaming smile as he entered the room. "I am quite alone this evening, so we can have a chat tête-a-tête." The person addressed was a pompous little man, rather corpulent, with a double chin, and immensely impressed with his own importance. He had a bald head, and a white moustache with the ends drawn out to a great length, and so twisted and waxed that they resembled a pair of skewers. This, together with the fact that his eyes were chronically inflamed and bulging with a constant tendency to roll, gave him an aspect of terrible ferocity. He was a bon vivant, and possessed a high reputation for his judgment of wines, an opinion which was always taken as final in any dispute at the clubs. He was in his element when reviewing his troops, where he might be seen cantering up and down in a state of great excitement, spurring his horse to make it rear and plunge to the terror and amazement of the nursemaids who formed a rear guard with their perambulators. One would have imagined that his men were all stone deaf judging by the way he addressed them in tones of thunder. In fact he always gave his hearers the impression that he was in a towering passion. For admiration and glory he had an insatiable thirst, which was only equalled by his greed for gold. Indeed it was a common joke amongst his officers that in the next campaign he would be found defending himself to the last drop of his blood with his drawn salary in his hand. Notwithstanding his absurd vanity, he was, like all French officers, brave to the core, and fearless as a lion, and for this reason alone he was adored by his men, who felt that he would prove his metal and lead them on to victory no matter what odds were against them when they were all but defeated, and leading a forlorn hope. "Well, mon ami, how has the world been treating you since I saw you last?" said Duval père. "So, so, but I must confess I have hardly recovered yet from the shock I got at Villebois' house the other night. Didn't you hear of it? Well you must know that fellow, Delapine, was staying with them as a guest, and he got into a discussion about spiritualism and all that sort of nonsense. Amongst other things he gave out that he was a conjurer, and so I thought I would put his powers to the test. Whereupon he spirited away my watch, and it was found in my hat in the spare bedroom. When I got it back again I offered to make him a present of it, if he could take it away again without my knowledge.