Yet even the beginning had a flavor of the unusual about it, strong enough to startle a man so used to a humdrum life and so unversed in anything out of the common as I.Here, then, is the beginning: One morning, as I sat smoking my after-breakfast cigar in my rooms in St.
James' Street, my friend Gustave de Berensac rushed in.

His bright brown eyes were sparkling, his mustache seemed twisted up more gayly and triumphantly than ever, and his manner was redolent of high spirits.

Yet it was a dull, somber, misty morning, for all that the month was July and another day or two would bring August.

But Gustave was a merry fellow, though always (as I had occasion to remember later on) within the limits of becoming mirth--as to which, to be sure, there may be much difference of opinion.
"Shame!" he cried, pointing at me.

"You are a man of leisure, nothing keeps you here; yet you stay in this _bouillon_ of an atmosphere, with France only twenty miles away over the sea!" "They have fogs in France too," said I."But whither tends your impassioned speech, my good friend?
Have you got leave ?" Gustave was at this time an extra secretary at the French Embassy in London.
"Leave?
Yes, I have leave--and, what is more, I have a charming invitation." "My congratulations," said I.
"An invitation which includes a friend," he continued, sitting down.