Scarcely do I scribble that last line on the back of an old envelope
when a voice hails me. It is a fellow free-lance, a short-story man
called MacBean. He is having a feast of ~Marennes~ and he asks me
to join him.

MacBean is a Scotsman with the soul of an Irishman. He has a keen, lean,
spectacled face, and if it were not for his gray hair he might be taken for
a student of theology. However, there is nothing of the Puritan in MacBean.
He loves wine and women, and money melts in his fingers.

He has lived so long in the Quarter he looks at life from the Parisian angle.
His knowledge of literature is such that he might be a Professor,
but he would rather be a vagabond of letters. We talk shop.
We discuss the American short story, but MacBean vows
they do these things better in France. He says that some of the ~contes~
printed every day in the ~Journal~ are worthy of Maupassant. After that
he buys more beer, and we roam airily over the fields of literature,
plucking here and there a blossom of quotation. A fine talk, vivid and eager.
It puts me into a kind of glow.

MacBean pays the bill from a handful of big notes, and the thought
of my own empty pockets for a moment damps me. However, when we rise to go,
it is well after midnight, and I am in a pleasant daze.
The rest of the evening may be summed up in the following jingle:




Noctambule