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Updated: June 7, 2025
"Here," said he, "mix me some brandy and water, or stop, ring the bell, Dick Bredin." Bredin rang the bell accordingly, and in a minute or so Lanty came in. "Here, you imp, do your duty." "Haven't you enough, sir? more, I think, will do you harm." "Go to h l, you young imp of perdition, do your duty, I say." Lanty here mixed him some brandy and water, and then held it to his lips.
Jeanne was waiting on the proprietor. M. Bredin finished his meal and rose. He felt content. All was well with the world. As he lumbered to his desk he passed Jeanne. He stopped. He wheezed a compliment. Then another. Paul, from his place by the wall, watched with jealous fury. M. Bredin chucked Jeanne under the chin.
No conscientious judge of character could have denied that Paul had hit the bull's eye. Bredin was a pig. He looked like a pig; he ate like a pig; he grunted like a pig. He had the lavish embonpoint of a pig. Also a porcine soul. If you had tied a bit of blue ribbon round his neck you could have won prizes with him at a show. Paul's eyes flashed with fury. 'I will slap him in the eye, he roared.
He was late in arriving, which was good in that it delayed the inevitable question as to the fate of the picture, but bad in every other respect. M. Bredin, squatting behind the cash-desk, grunted fiercely at him; and, worse, Jeanne, who, owing to his absence, had had to be busier than suited her disposition, was distant and haughty. A murky gloom settled upon Paul.
As he did so, the belated luncher called 'Waiter! but Paul was otherwise engaged. His entire nervous system seemed to have been stirred up with a pole. With a hoarse cry he dashed forward. He would destroy this pig who chucked his Jeanne under the chin. The first intimation M. Bredin had of the declaration of war was the impact of a French roll on his ear.
He bustled to and fro with undiminished energy. At the end of the day M. Bredin paid him his eighteen shillings with a grunt, and Paul walked out of the restaurant a masterless man. He went to his attic and sat down on the bed. Propped up against the wall was the picture. He looked at it with unseeing eyes. He stared dully before him.
It was to be feared, nevertheless, that he would notice that rushing sound, like a waterfall, which the gas produces in escaping. "How many jests at the expense of the Abbé Miolan! He was about to ascend with Janninet and Bredin. During the operation, their balloon took fire, and an ignorant populace tore it to pieces.
"He's not always settled, gentlemen," said Lanty, "and I see that one of his wandering fits is comin' on him now." "What is the reason," said Captain Bredin for such was the rank of the person he called Dick "why is it that there is not a physician in attendance?" "He would not let one of the thieves near him," replied Lanty, "for fraid they'd kill him."
Now it so happened that M. Bredin, when things went well with him, was wont to be filled with a ponderous amiability. It was not often that this took a practical form, though it is on record that in an exuberant moment he once gave a small boy a halfpenny. More frequently it merely led him to soften the porcine austerity of his demeanour.
It was one of those nobbly, chunky rolls with sharp corners, almost as deadly as a piece of shrapnel. M. Bredin was incapable of jumping, but he uttered a howl and his vast body quivered like a stricken jelly. A second roll, whizzing by, slapped against the wall. A moment later a cream-bun burst in sticky ruin on the proprietor's left eye.
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