Here two friends were sitting apart on the bed. One of them, a tall, thickset, fleshy fellow, with a red face, who looked like a regular butcher was almost crying, for he was very much touched. The other was a frail-looking, thin, skinny little man with a long nose which always looked moist, and little piggy eyes which were fixed on the ground. He was a polished and cultivated individual, he had been a clerk and treated his friend a little superciliously, which the other secretly resented. They had been drinking together all day.

“He’s taken a liberty!” cried the fleshy friend, shaking the clerk’s head violently with his left arm which he had round him. By “taking a liberty” he meant that he had hit him. The stout one, who had been a sergeant, was secretly envious of his emaciated friend and so they were trying to outdo one another in the choiceness of their language.

“And I tell you that you are wrong too⁠ ⁠…” the clerk began dogmatically, resolutely refusing to look at his opponent and staring at the floor with a dignified air.