as to enhance the pleasure of travelling. He was a good cook, a good nurse, a good photographer; he had the infallible flair of a curio hunter, and while less wily collectors were hesitating and beating about the bush, he would mark his prey—perhaps an old lacquer bowl, perhaps a bronze incense-burner—pounce on it, appreciate it, depreciate it, and by sheer force of will-power whisk it away to his lair before the dealer had made up his mind on the subject of price. He had two deficiencies, which were also virtues on occasion: he easily lost command of Japanese idiom and British phlegm. As he chose to consider me a fair linguist, it fell to my lot to translate arguments and accusations which were violently impossible to reproduce. However, I did my best, and was rewarded by many scenes of rare comedy. I often thought he would have done better to rely on himself, since discussion gave the seller time to invent incredible merits for his wares: at such times one glance or gesture of contemptuous disbelief inspired more respect for the buyer than languid protest, and that fiery fashion of raiding a china shop, of assessing the stock with the rapidity of a freebooter, and helping himself to anything that took his fancy, was so appalling to the deliberate, ceremonious vendor, that I believe goods were frequently yielded up in terror and a vague hope of appeasement. Not that Mr. Bates invariably got the better of the bargain. It is my belief that many geese sully with unsuspected falsity the whiteness of his swans. But for him every purchase was a swan, and, if you hinted otherwise, the crime of a Frenchman who should express an unpatriotic belief in Captain Dreyfus' innocence were light in comparison. I seldom committed that impru-
