Draconmeyer is also an habitue.

I myself, it is true, have spent my winters elsewhere, for various reasons, and am comparatively a stranger, but my visit here was arranged many months ago.

You yourself, Monsieur Douaille, are a good Parisian, and no good Parisian should miss his yearly pilgrimages to the Mecca of the pleasure-seeker.

We meet together this evening, therefore, purely as friends who have a common interest at heart." The man from whom this atmosphere of nervousness radiated--a man of medium height, inclined towards corpulence, with small grey imperial, a thin red ribbon in his buttonhole, and slightly prominent features--promptly intervened.

He had the air of a man wholly ill-at-ease.