“You’re pulling my leg,” muttered Bathybius, just as he had answered William Elson.

“I attach no importance to alcohol, any more than to any other stimulant,” apologized Marcueil, “but I think it possible that a man capable of making love indefinitely might experience no difficulty in doing anything else indefinitely: drinking alcohol, digesting, spending his muscular forces, et cetera. Whatever the nature of the act, it is the same whether performed for the first time or the last, in the same way as, if the Highways Department hasn’t made a mistake, the first kilometer of a road is equal to the last.”

“Science has other convictions on that matter,” said the doctor, who was getting annoyed. “Anywhere other than in the department of the impossible, which scientists do not admit, as they have no chair in it, energies can only develop if they are specialized – and even then not indefinitely! A wrestler is neither a stallion nor a thinker; the universal Hercules never has and never will exist, and as for the benefits of alcoholism: bulls drink only water!”

“Tell me, doctor,” asked Marcueil as innocently as he could manage, “haven’t you tried making them drink alcohol?”

But Bathybius didn’t hear this: he had gone, slamming the door behind him. Actually he lived only a few steps away.

Then something happened:

Mark Antony shuddered, uncurled himself like a lion about to spring, drew himself up very gradually till he towered above his counter, stretched out his arms, coughed and said calmly: “Order, please!” in English.

That was all, and he sat down again.

The general, embarrassed by the doctor’s ill-humor, did his best to take André Marcueil’s mind off it:

“Charming evening you gave us,” he said. “You had a lot of people there.”

André jumped, with a vehemence scarcely justified by the originality of the remark.

“By the way, general, it is to you I owe the honor of having received Mr. William Elson. He is a scientist of great merit.”

“Pooh!” said the general, with the laudable intention, which was encouraged by the stout, of being modest, as if he had taken the compliment personally. “An unimportant chemist, let’s not talk about it, my dear fellow. What’s chemistry, between ourselves, my young friend? It’s like a sort of photography, only you can never frame its prints.”

“And. . .” continued Andre, hesitating, “. . . what about that girl, Miss Elson?”

“Pooh!” cried the general, who was now well launched on the art of declining praise, as if he were crossing Africa at a gallop, “Pooh! a little slip of a girl. . .”

He did not himself have the slightest idea what the end of his sentence was going to be, but one could imagine that it would be pejorative.