There was an outcry:

“Oh! General!”

“But surely, when you were in Africa?. . .” Henriette Cyne whispered insidiously under the general’s goatee.

“In Africa?” said the general. “That’s different. But I wasn’t there during the war. There may be a rape or two, in wartime. . .”

“One or two? That’s a number, that’s even two numbers, but which one is it?” asked Saint-Jurieu.

“Manner of speaking! Let me continue,” the general went on. “So I’ve only been in Africa in peacetime. And what is the duty of a French soldier abroad in peacetime? Is it to act like a savage? Or is it not rather to bring civilization with him, and particularly that which is most seductive in that civilization – French gallantry? So that when the harems of Algiers learn that our officers are coming it gives them a change from those uncouth Arabs, who know nothing of refined manners, and they exclaim: ‘Oh! Here come the Frenchmen! Now we’ll see some. . .’ ”

“General, I have a young daughter,” said William Elson with some severity, and just in time.

“But it seems to me,” said the general, “that our conversation so far, with all these figures. . .”

“Are you talking business, gentlemen?” inquired the young American girl with more than praiseworthy naïveté.

William Elson motioned to her to withdraw.

“We should have started by consulting the doctor, ladies,” remarked Mrs. Gough, “instead of listening so patiently to all these nasty technicalities.”

“I once observed,” said Bathybius, “an idiot in the hospital at Bicêtre – he was an epileptic too – who, all his life, and he is still alive, has given himself up almost uninterruptedly to sexual acts. But. . . in solitude, which explains a lot.”

“How horrible,” said several ladies.

“I mean, his cerebral stimulation explains everything,” the doctor went on.

“Then is it women who inhibit men?” asked Henriette.

“I told you in the first place that he is an idiot, mademoiselle.”

“But. . . you were talking about his. . . cerebral capacities! So he couldn’t have been so much of an idiot after all,” said Henriette.

“Besides, it isn’t the brain but the medulla which is the center of those emotions,” replied Bathybius.

“His medulla had genius,” said Marcueil.

“But. . .since we are not in Bicêtre. . . what about people outside?” inquired Mrs. Gough.

“According to the medical profession, human capacity may reach from nine to twelve, at the most, in twenty-four hours, and then only in exceptional cases,” stated Bathybius.

“The apostle of unlimited human capabilities now has the floor, to reply to human science,” said William Elson to his host with friendly irony.