“For the good of my soul,” laughed Martin, “and in order to attain happiness.” “Our good friends the English are a wonderful race,” said Bigourdin, “and I admire them enormously, but there’s not one of them who isn’t a little bit mad.” To the coterie of the Café de l’Univers, however, he gave a different explanation altogether of Professor Martin’s descent in the social scale. The Professor, said he, had abandoned the _professoriat_ for the more lucrative paths of commerce and had decided to open a hotel in England, where every one knew the hotels were villainous and provided nothing for their clients but overdone bacon and eggs and raw beef-steaks. The Professor, more enlightened than his compatriots, was apprenticing himself to the business in the orthodox Continental fashion. As the substantial Gaspard Bigourdin himself, son of the late equally substantially, although one-armed and one-legged Armédée Bigourdin, had, to the common knowledge of Brantôme, served as scullion, waiter, _sous-chef de cuisine_, _sous-maître d’hôtel_, and bookkeeper at various hotels in Lyons, in order to become the _bon hôtelier_ that he was, his announcement caused no sensation whatever. The professor of the _Ecole Normale_ bewailed his own chill academic lot and proclaimed Monsieur Martin an exceedingly lucky fellow. “But, _mon cher patron_, it isn’t true what you have said at the Café de l’Univers,” protested Martin, when Bigourdin told him of the explanation. Bigourdin waved his great arm. “How am I to know it isn’t true? How am I to get into the English minds of you and my _farceur_ of a brother-in-law so as to discover why you arrive as an honoured guest at my hotel and then in the wink of an eye become the waiter of the establishment? What am I to say to our friends? They wouldn’t care a hang (_ils se ficheraient pas mal_) for your soul. If you are to continue to mix with them on terms of equality they must have an explanation, _nom de Dieu_, which they can understand.” “I never dreamed,” said Martin, “of entering the circle at the Café again.” “_Mais, j’y ai pensé, moi, animal!_” cried Bigourdin. “Because you have the fantasy of becoming my waiter, are you any less the same human being I had the pleasure of introducing to my friends?”