CHAPTER XXIV.
A little later I was called to Monte Carlo and went for a few days, leaving Oscar, as he said, perfectly happy, with good food, excellent champagne, absinthe and coffee, and his simple fisher friends.
When I came back to La Napoule, I found everything altered and altered for the worse.

There was an Englishman of a good class named M---- staying at the hotel.

He was accompanied by a youth of seventeen or eighteen whom he called his servant.

Oscar wanted to know if I minded meeting him.
"He is charming, Frank, and well read, and he admires me very much: you won't mind his dining with us, will you ?" "Of course not," I replied.

But when I saw M---- I thought him an insignificant, foolish creature, who put to show a great admiration for Oscar, and drank in his words with parted lips; and well he might, for he had hardly any brains of his own.