Among other strokes of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and won six hundred glasses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free passages.

None of the other menexcept the cavalry officer, who drew in his legs slightlytook the slightest interest in this poor wretcha handsome lad with square-cut features and fair tousled hair, who had tried to get courage out of absinthe before leaving for the war.

'I give you my word that a few drops of absinthe in a tumbler of water make the most effective and the least harmful stimulant in the world.'

On his primitive, out-of-door, fox-hunting mind the ethics of suicide lay as uneasily as absinthe on the stomach of a baby.