I

He passed on. “I will go as far as the Madeleine,” he said, “and walk back slowly.”

As he reached the corner of the Palace de l’Opera, he passed a stout young fellow, whose face he vaguely recollected having seen somewhere. He began to follow him, turning over his recollections and repeating to himself half-aloud: “Where the deuce did I know that joker?”

He searched without being able to recollect, and then all at once, by a strange phenomenon of memory, the same man appeared to him thinner, younger, and clad in a hussar uniform. He exclaimed aloud: “What, Forestier!” and stepping out he tapped the other on the shoulder. The promenader turned round and looked at him, and then said: “What is it, sir?”

Duroy broke into a laugh. “Don’t you know me?” said he.

“No.”

“George Duroy, of the 6th Hussars.”

Forestier held out his hands, exclaiming: “What, old fellow! How are you?”

“Very well, and you?”

“Oh, not very brilliant! Just fancy, I have a chest in brown paper now. I cough six months out of twelve, through a cold I caught at Bougival the year of my return to Paris, four years ago.”

And Forestier, taking his old comrade’s arm, spoke to him of his illness, related the consultations, opinions, and advice of the doctors, and the difficulty of following this advice in his position. He was told to spend the winter in the South, but how could he? He was married, and a journalist in a good position.