"Good-evening--or, good-morning, perchance," said Fontenette. "I suepose
thaz a great thing to remove those old stain' that chloro_form_, eh?"

"Ach! it iss you? Ach, you must coom--coom undt hellup me! Coom! you shall
see _someding_."

"A moment," said the Creole. "May I inquire you how is that, that you call
on us in yo' sock feet?"

"Ach! I am already t'e socks putting on pefore I remember I do not need
t'em! But coom! coom! see a vonderfool!" He led, and Fontenette, when he
had blown a cloud of smoke through his nose, followed, saying exclusively
for his own ear:

"A wonder fool, yes! But a fool is no wonder to me any more; I find myself
to be that kind."



X


When, hypocritically clad in dressing-gown and slippers, I stopped at my
guest's inner door and Fontenette opened it just enough to let me enter, I
saw, indeed, a wonderful sight. The entomologist had lighted up the room,
and it was filled, filled! with gorgeous moths as large as my hand and all
of a kind, dancing across one another's airy paths in a bewildering maze
or alighting and quivering on this thing and that. The mosquito-net,
draping almost from ceiling to floor, was beflowered with them
majestically displaying in splendid alternation their upper and under