After a while Lucien, having looked about the café, rose and went from table to table where sat those citizens who, by reason of lowlier social status or personal idiosyncrasies, had not been admitted into the Inner Coterie of Notables, and greeted old acquaintances. Monsieur Viriot then caught Martin’s eye and lifted his glass again. “_A votre santé_, Monsieur Martin.” Martin bowed. “_A la vôtre, monsieur!_” “I hope that you and my son will be good friends. It is important that the youth of our two countries, so friendly, so intimately bound, should learn to know and appreciate each other; especially when one of them, like yourself, has the power of translating England into terms of France.” And with the courteous simplicity of a grey, square-headed, close-cropped _marchand de vins en gros_, he lifted his glass again. “_A l’Entente Cordiale._” When Lucien returned to the circle, his father re-introduced him to Martin. “In fact,” he concluded, “here is an Englishman who not only speaks French like you and me, but eats truffles and talks the idiom of the quarrymen and is qualifying himself to be a good Périgordin.” It was charmingly said. The company hummed approval. “_C’est bien vrai_,” said Bigourdin. Lucien again bowed. He would do himself the honour of presenting himself at monsieur’s hotel. Monsieur was doubtless staying at the Hôtel des Grottes. “Monsieur Bigourdin has taken me as a waiter into his service,” replied Martin. “_Ah! Tant mieux!_” exclaimed Lucien, as if the announcement were the most ordinary one in the world, and shook hands with him heartily. “Like that, as my father says, one becomes a good Périgordin.” So Martin went home and contentedly to bed. Again a little corner of the earth that he might call his own was offered him in this new land so courteous to, yet so sensitively aloof from the casual Englishman, but on the other hand, so generous and hospitable to the Englishman into whom the spirit of France had entered. Was there here, thought he, the little round hole which he, little round peg, after thirty years of square-holed discomfort, had been pre-ordained to fill? The thought soothed him.