The Professor: Avignon 



the minister's company, I was ushered into a h'ttle 

 drawing-room at the Tuileries by chamberlains in 

 knee-breeches and silver-buckled shoes. They were 

 queer people to look at. Their uniforms and their 

 stiff gait gave them the appearance, in my eyes, of 

 Beetles who, by way of wingcases, wore a great, 

 gold-laced dress-coat, with a key in the small of 

 the back. There were already a score of persons 

 from all parts waiting in the room. These in- 

 cluded geographical explorers, botanists, geologists, 

 antiquaries, archaeologists, collectors of prehistoric 

 flints, in short, the usual representatives of provin- 

 cial scientific life. 



The Emperor entered, very simply dressed, with 

 no parade about him beyond a wide, red, watered- 

 silk ribbon across his chest. No sign of majesty, 

 an ordinary man, round and plump, with a large 

 moustache and a pair of half-closed drowsy eyes. 

 He moved from one to the other, talking to each 

 of us for a moment as the minister mentioned our 

 names and the nature of our occupations. He 

 showed a fair amount of information as he changed 

 his subject from the ice-floes of Spitzbergen to the 

 dunes of Gascony, from a Carlovingian charter to 

 the flora of the Sahara, from the progress in beet- 

 root-growing to Caesar's trenches before Alesia. 

 When my turn came, he questioned me upon the 

 hypermetamorphosis of the Meloidae, my last es- 

 say in entomology. 1 answered as best I could, 

 floundering a little in the proper mode of address, 

 mixing up the everyday monsieur with sire, a word 

 whose use was so utterly new to me. I passed 

 179 



