Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/91



It is certain he meant very seriously that if he ever came into his kingdom Godelinette should be queen. The song had been printed, but, so far as I knew, had never had much vogue; and it seemed an odd chance that this evening, in a French seaport town where I was passing a single night, I should stray by hazard into a sailors' pothouse and hear it again.

Edmund Pair lived in the Latin Quarter when I did, but he was no longer a mere student. He had published a good many songs; articles had been written about them in the newspapers; and at his rooms you would meet the men who had "arrived"—actors, painters, musicians, authors, and now and then a politician —who thus recognised him as more or less one of themselves. Everybody liked him; everybody said, "He is splendidly gifted; he will go far." A few of us already addressed him, half-playfully perhaps, as cher maître.

He was three or four years older than I—eight or nine and twenty to my twenty-five—and I was still in the schools; but for all that we were great chums. Quite apart from his special talent, he was a remarkable man—amusing in talk, good-looking, generous, affectionate. He had read; he had travelled; he had hob-and-nobbed with all sorts and conditions of people. He had wit, imagination, humour, and a voice that made whatever he said a cordial to the ear. For myself I admired him, enjoyed him, loved him, with equal fervour; he had all of my hero-worship and the lion's share of my friendship; perhaps I was vain as well as glad to be distinguished by his intimacy. We used to spend two or