would meet the men who had 'arrived'--actors, painters, musicians,
authors, and now and then a politician--who thus recognised him as
more or less one of themselves. Everybody liked him; everybody said,
'He is splendidly gifted; he will go far.' A few of us already
addressed him, half-playfully perhaps, as _cher maître_.

He was three or four years older than I--eight- or nine-and-twenty to
my twenty-five--and I was still in the schools; but for all that we
were great chums. Quite apart from his special talent, he was a
remarkable man--amusing in talk, good-looking, generous, affectionate.
He had read; he had travelled; he had hob-and-nobbed with all sorts
and conditions of people. He had wit, imagination, humour, and a voice
that made whatever he said a cordial to the ear. For myself, I admired
him, enjoyed him, loved him, with equal fervour; he had all of my
hero-worship, and the lion's share of my friendship; perhaps I was
vain as well as glad to be distinguished by his intimacy. We used to
spend two or three evenings a week together, at his place or at mine,
or over the table of a café, talking till the small hours--Elysian
sessions, at which we smoked more cigarettes and emptied more _bocks_
than I should care to count. On Sundays and holidays we would take
long walks arm-in-arm in the Bois, or, accompanied by Godelinette, go
to Viroflay or Fontainebleau, lunch in the open, bedeck our hats with
wildflowers, and romp like children. He was tall and slender, with
dark waving hair, a delicate aquiline profile, a clear brown skin,
and grey eyes, alert, intelligent, kindly. I fancy the Boulevard St.
Michel, flooded with sunshine, broken here and there by long crisp
shadows; trams and omnibuses toiling up the hill, tooting their horns;
students and _étudiantes_ sauntering gaily backwards and forwards on
the _trottoir_; an odour of asphalte, of caporal tobacco; myself one
of the multitude on the terrace of a café; and Edmund and Godelinette