Immediately following this, our conductor confided to me that he
had once had the honor of serving Mr. Clemens, whom he referred
to as Mick Twine. He told me things about Mr. Clemens of which I
had never heard. I do not think Mr. Clemens ever heard of them
either. Then the brigadier--it was now after three o'clock, and
between three and three-thirty he was a brigadier--drew my arm
within his.
"I, too, am an author," he stated. "It is not generally known,
but I have written much. I wrote a book of which you may have
heard-- 'The Wandering Jew.'" And he tapped himself on the bosom
proudly.
I said I had somehow contracted a notion that a party named Sue
--Eugene Sue--had something to do with writing the work of that
name.
"Ah, but you are right there, my friend," he said. "Sue wrote
'The Wandering Jew' the first time--as a novel, merely; but I wrote
him much better--as a satire on the anti-Semitic movement."
I surrendered without offering to strike another blow and from
that time on he had his own way with us. The day, as I was pleased
to note at the time, had begun mercifully to draw to a close; we
were driving back to Paris, and he, sitting on the front seat, had
just attained the highest post in the army under the regime of the
last Empire, when he said:
"Behold, m'sieur! We are now approaching a wine shop on the left.
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