AND Pelet himself?
How did I continue to like him?
Oh, extremely well! Nothing could be more smooth, gentlemanlike, and even friendly, than his demeanour to me.

I had to endure from him neither cold neglect, irritating interference, nor pretentious assumption of superiority.

I fear, however, two poor, hard-worked Belgian ushers in the establishment could not have said as much; to them the director's manner was invariably dry, stern, and cool.

I believe he perceived once or twice that I was a little shocked at the difference he made between them and me, and accounted for it by saying, with a quiet sarcastic smile-- "Ce ne sont que des Flamands--allez!" And then he took his cigar gently from his lips and spat on the painted floor of the room in which we were sitting.

Flamands certainly they were, and both had the true Flamand physiognomy, where intellectual inferiority is marked in lines none can mistake; still they were men, and, in the main, honest men; and I could not see why their being aboriginals of the flat, dull soil should serve as a pretext for treating them with perpetual severity and contempt.