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ordered coffee, liqueurs, cigars and writing materials, we had still not appeased our ravenous appetites.
    'That's better,' said Korzakow, belching like an Oriental. 'And now what do we do?'
    'We'll have coffee.'
    'Have you gone crazy?' said Korzakow. 'Shouldn't we scoot, make a run for it?'
    The room was three-quarters empty. The waiter was in the kitchen. The cashier shut up in his cage. The head waiter was chatting to a late customer, an old gentleman wearing decorations, who was folding his napkin. We could just slip out! And Korzakow winked his eye towards the open door.
    'No,' I said to him, 'I'm staying here. I'm going to write a note. You'll take it into town. Then, we'll see. . . .'
    He laughed. He had pushed back his chair. He had his cigar rammed sideways into his mouth. He was gulping down little glasses of old Chartreuse. He preferred the green to the golden. He was chatting with the waiter, who had served his apprenticeship for a while in Paris, and was asking him for news of some night-club or other in Montmartre.
    'Here,' I said to Korzakow, handing him the letter I had just sealed. 'Take it to the address on the envelope. It's right nearby, on the other side of the station, and try to bring the fellow back to me, or the money. You will give him this little book....'
    I took the volume of Villon out of my pocket. The waiter had moved away. I leaned towards Korzakow : 'This is worth about two thousand. Behave yourself, and look sharp. . . .'
    Korzakow looked at me, astounded. He turned the little volume round and round in his enormous paws. It was a very old edition — Lyon, 1546. He did not seem to know what to do with it.
    'Gee-up!' I said to him. 'Stuff it in your pocket and piss off. . .
    He grabbed his old hat, plonked it on his head and went out like a whirlwind.
    'He's a card,' said the waiter.
    'Yes, he is a card.'
    'Would Monsieur like anything else?' the waiter asked me again.
    'Bring me another cigar.'
    Would Korzakow come back, or would I wind up in jail ?
    'Have you got a newspaper?' I asked the waiter.
    I lit my cigar.
    The waiter brought me the papers.
    This is what's known as obtaining goods under false pretences, I said to myself, puffing away at my cigar.
    It seemed to me that the waiter was watching me now out of the corner of his eye. I buried my nose in the newspapers. But my mind kept wandering and I soon put them down to settle myself more comfortably on the bench.
    It was only then, as I stretched out my legs, that I noticed my shoes were torn and dirty, and I realized what a poor figure I cut.
    But it was all the same to me.
    I was longing desperately for a snooze. Almost dropping off.
    People in the catering trade are poor psychologists: they take an industrial baron, with false rings on every finger, for a genuine prince, and assume that a card-sharper, who makes an impression by having his cases stamped with a crown, is a monarch travelling incognito. You read about it every day in the papers. But me? . . .
    'Waiter!'
    'Yes, sir?'
    'The bill, please.'
     
    I am laughing with tears in my eyes beside the fountain. . ..
     
    Time was passing.
    In Belgium, it is rather like Russia, people eat at virtually all hours of the day, but in Antwerp there are two sittings in the restaurants, one at 11 a.m., before the Corn Exchange opens at noon, and the other at 5 p.m., the hour when the diamond merchants have finished their work. And now, the diamond merchants were beginning to come in.. ..
    . . . And still I could not pay the bill, and Korzakow had not returned.
    Ach, the bastard!
     
    Not every polisher of spectacle-lenses is a Spinoza, but Mandaieff, to whose house I had sent Korzakow, was a pure intellectual who devoted himself to mathematics and was a great bibliophile.
    The proportion of intellectuals among the corporation of diamond merchants is amazingly high. By intellectuals I do not mean those young products of a recently completed university course, who are destined to make a more