My Uncle Oswald

4

THE NEXT EVENING, sharp at eight o’clock, I presented myself at the embassy. I was fully rigged up in white tie and tails. A tail-coat, in those days, had a deep pocket on the inside of each tail, and in these pockets I had secreted a total of twelve small boxes, each with a single pill inside. The embassy was a blaze of lights, and carriages were rolling up at the gates from all directions. Uniformed flunkeys were everywhere. I marched in and joined the receiving line.

“Dear boy,” said Lady Makepiece. “I’m so glad you could come. Charles, this is Oswald Cornelius, William’s son.”

Sir Charles Makepiece was a tiny little fellow with a full head of elegant white hair. His skin was the colour of biscuits, and there was an unhealthy powdery look about it, as though it had been lightly dusted over with brown sugar. The entire face, from forehead to chin, was crisscrossed with deep hair-line cracks, and this, together with the powdery, biscuity skin, made him look like a terracotta bust that was beginning to crumble. “So you are William’s boy, are you?” he said, shaking my hand. “How are you making out in Paris? Anything I can do for you, just let me know.”

I moved on into the glittering crowd. I seemed to be the only male present who was not smothered in decorations and ribbons. We stood around drinking champagne. Then we went in to dinner. It was quite a sight, that diningroom. About one hundred guests were seated on either side of a table as long as two cricket pitches. Small place cards told us where to sit. I was between two incredibly ugly old females. One was the wife of the Bulgarian ambassador and the other was an aunt of the King of Spain. I concentrated on the food, which was superb. I still remember the large truffle, as big as a golf ball, baked in white wine in a little earthenware pot with the lid on. And the way in which the poached turbot was so superlatively undercooked, with the centre almost raw but still very hot. (The English and the Americans invariably overcook their fish.) And then the wines! They were something to remember, those wines!

But what, pray, did seventeen-year-old Oswald Cornelius know about wines? A fair question. And yet the answer is that he knew rather a lot. Because what I have not yet told you is that my own father loved wine above all other things in life, including women. He was, I think, a genuine expert. His passion was for burgundy. He adored claret, too, but he always considered even the greatest of the clarets to be just a touch on the feminine side. “Claret,” he used to say, “may have a prettier face and a better figure, but it’s the burgundies that have the muscles and the sinews.” By the time I was fourteen, he had begun to communicate some of this wine passion to me, and only a year ago, he had taken me on a ten-day walking tour through Burgundy during the vendange in September. We had started out at Chagny and from there we had strolled in our own time northward to Dijon, so that in the week that followed we traversed the entire length of the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits. It was a thrilling experience. We walked not on the main road but on the narrow rutted tracks that led us past practically every great vineyard on that famous golden slope, first Montrachet, then Meursault, then Pommard, and a night in a wonderful small hotel in Beaune where we ate e’crevisses swimming in white wine and thick slices of foie gras on buttered toast. I can remember the two of us the next day eating lunch while sitting on the low white wall along the boundary of RomanéeConti—cold chicken, French bread, a fromage dur, and a bottle of Romanée-Conti itself. We spread our food on the top of the wall and stood the bottle alongside, together with two good wineglasses. My father drew the cork and poured the wine while I did my best to carve the chicken, and there we sat in the warm autumn sun, watching the grape pickers combing the rows of vines, filling their baskets, bringing them to the heads of the rows, dumping the grapes into larger baskets, which in turn were emptied into carts drawn by pale creamy-brown horses. I can remember my father sitting on the wall and waving a halfeaten drumstick in the direction of this splendid scene and saying, “You are sitting, my boy, on the edge of the most famous piece of land in the whole world! Just look at it! Four and a half acres of flinty red clay! That’s all it is! But those grapes you can see them picking at this very moment will produce a wine that is a glory among wines. It is also almost unobtainable because so little of it is made. This bottle we are drinking now came from here eleven years ago. Smell it! Inhale the bouquet! Taste it! Drink it! But never try to describe it! It is impossible to put such a flavour into words! To drink a Romanée-Conti is like having an orgasm in the mouth and the nose both at the same time.”

I loved it when my father got himself worked up like this. Listening to him during those early years, I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.

We visited Clos de Vougeot and Bonnes Mares and Clos de la Roche and Chambertin and many other marvellous places. We went down into the cellars of the châteaux and tasted last year’s wine from the barrels. We watched the grapes being pressed in gigantic wooden screw presses that required six men to turn the screw. We saw the juice being run off from the presses into the great wooden vats, and at Chambolle-Musigny, where they had started picking a week earlier than most of the others, we saw the grape juice coming alive in the colossal twelve-foot-high wooden vats, boiling and bubbling as it began its own magic process of converting sugar into alcohol. And while we actually stood there watching, the wine became so fiercely active and the boiling and bubbling reached such a pitch of frenzy that several men had to climb up and sit upon the cover of each vat to hold it down.

I have wandered again. I must get back to my story. But I did want to demonstrate to you very quickly that despite my tender years, I was quite capable of appreciating the quality of the wines I drank that evening at the British Embassy in Paris. They were indeed something to remember.

We started with a Chablis Grand Cru Grenouilles. Then a Latour. Then a Richebourg. And with the dessert, a d’Yquem of great age. I cannot remember the vintage of any one of them, but they were all pre-phylloxera.

When dinner was over, the women, led by Lady Makepiece, left the room. Sir Charles shepherded the men into a vast adjoining sitting-room to drink port and brandy and coffee.

In the sitting-room, as the men began to split up into groups, I quickly manoeuvred myself alongside the host himself. “Ah, there you are, my boy,” he said. “Come and sit here with me.”

Perfect.

There were eleven of us, including me, in this particular group, and Sir Charles courteously introduced me to each one of them in turn. “This is young Oswald Cornelius,” he said. “His father was our man in Copenhagen. Meet the German ambassador, Oswald.” I met the German ambassador. Then I met the Italian ambassador and the Hungarian ambassador and the Russian ambassador and the Peruvian ambassador and the Mexican ambassador. Then I met the French minister for foreign affairs and a French army general and lastly a funny little dark man from Japan who was introduced simply as Mr. Mitsouko. Every one of them spoke English, and it seemed that out of courtesy to their host they were making it the language of the evening.

“Have a glass of port, young man,” Sir Charles Makepiece said to me, “and pass it round.” I poured myself some port and carefully passed the decanter to my left. “This is a good bottle. Fonseca’s eighty-seven. Your father tells me you’ve got a scholarship to Trinity. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. My moment was coming any second now. I must not miss it. I must plunge in.

“What’s your subject?” Sir Charles asked me.

“Science, sir,” I answered. Then I plunged. “As a matter of fact,” I said, lifting my voice just enough for them all to hear me, “there’s some absolutely amazing work being done in one of the laboratories up there at this moment. Highly secret. You simply wouldn’t believe what they’ve just discovered.”

Ten heads came up and ten pairs of eyes rose from port glasses and coffee cups and regarded me with mild interest.

“I didn’t know you’d already gone up,” Sir Charles said. “I thought you had a year to wait and that’s why you’re over here.”

“Quite right,” I said. “But my future tutor invited me to spend most of last term working in the Natural Sciences Lab. That’s my favourite subject, natural sciences.”

“And what, may I ask, have they just discovered that is so secret and so remarkable?” There was a touch of banter in Sir Charles’s voice now, and who could blame him?

“Well, sir,” I murmured, and then purposely, I stopped.

Silence for a few seconds. The nine foreigners and the British ambassador sat still, waiting politely for me to go on. They were regarding me with a mixture of tolerance and amusement. This young lad, they seemed to be saying, has a bit of a nerve to be holding forth like this in front of us. But let’s hear him out. It’s better than talking politics.

“Don’t tell me they are letting a fellow of your age handle secrets,” Sir Charles said, smiling a little with his crumbling terra-cotta face.

“These aren’t war secrets, sir,” I said. “They couldn’t help an enemy. These are secrets that are going to help all of mankind.”

“Then tell us about them,” Sir Charles said, lighting a huge cigar. “You have a distinguished audience here and they are all waiting to hear from you.”

“I think it’s the greatest scientific breakthrough since Pasteur,” I said. “It’s going to change the world.”

The foreign minister of France made a sharp whistling sound by sucking air up through his hairy nostrils. “You have another Pasteur in England at this moment?” he said. “If so, I would very much like to hear about him.” He was a sleek oily Frenchman, this foreign minister, and sharp as a knife. I would have to watch him.

“If the world is about to be changed,” Sir Charles said, “I’m a little surprised that this information hasn’t yet found its way to my desk.”

Steady on, Oswald, I told myself. You’ve hardly begun and already you’ve been laying it on too thick.

“Forgive me, sir, but the point is he hasn’t published yet.”

“Who hasn’t? Who’s he?”

“Professor Yousoupoff, sir.”

The Russian ambassador put down his glass of port and said, “Yousoupoff? Iss he a Russian?”

“Yes, sir, he’s a Russian.”

“Then vy haven’t I heard of him?”

I wasn’t about to get into a tangle with this black-eyed, black-bearded Cossack, so I kept silent.

“Come on, then, young man,” Sir Charles said. “Tell us about the greatest scientific breakthrough of our time. You mustn’t keep us in suspense, you know.”

I took a few deep breaths and a gulp of port. This was the great moment. Pray heaven I wouldn’t mess it up.

“For years,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff has been working on the theory that the seeds of a ripe pomegranate contain an ingredient that has powerful rejuvenative properties.”

“We have millions and millions of pomegranates in my country!” the Italian ambassador exclaimed, looking proud.

“Be quiet, Emilio,” Sir Charles said. “Let the boy go on.”

“For twenty-seven years,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff has been studying the seed of the pomegranate. It became an obsession with him. He used to sleep in the laboratory. He never went out socially. He never married. The whole place was littered with pomegranates and their seeds.”

“Excuse me, please,” said the little Japanese man. “But why the pomegranate? Why not the grape or the black currant?”

“I cannot answer that question, sir,” I said. “I suppose it was simply what you might call a hunch.”

“Hell of a long time to spend on a hunch,” Sir Charles said. “But go on, my boy. We mustn’t interrupt you.”

“Last January,” I said, “the Professor’s patience was at last rewarded. What he did was this. He dissected the seed of a pomegranate and examined the contents bit by bit under a powerful microscope. And it was only then that he observed in the very centre of the seed a minuscule speck of red vegetable tissue that he’d never seen before. He proceeded to isolate this tiny speck of tissue. But it was obviously too small to be of any use on its own. So the Professor set out to dissect one hundred seeds and to obtain from them one hundred of these tiny red particles. This is where he allowed me to assist him. I mean by dissecting out these particles under a microscope. This alone occupied us for a whole week.”

I took another sip of port. My audience waited for me to go on.

“So we now had one hundred red particles, but even when we put them all together on a glass slide, the result could still not be seen by the naked eye.”

“And you say they were red, these little things?” said the Hungarian ambassador.

“Under the microscope they were a brilliant scarlet,” I said.

“And what did this famous professor do with them?”

“He fed them to a rat,” I said.

“A rat!”

“Yes,” I said. “A big white rat.”

“Vy vould anybody vish to feed deese little red bornegranate tings to a rat?” the German ambassador asked.

“Give him a chance, Wolfgang,” Sir Charles said to the German. “Let him finish. I want to know what happened.” He nodded for me to go on.

“You see, sir,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff had in the laboratory a lot of white rats. He took the one hundred tiny red particles and fed every one of them to a single large healthy male rat. He did this by inserting them, under a microscope, into a piece of meat. He then put the rat in a cage together with ten female rats. I remember very clearly how the Professor and I stood beside the cage watching the male rat. It was late afternoon and we were so excited we had forgotten all about lunch.”

“Excuse me one moment, please,” the clever French foreign minister said. “But why were you so excited? What made you think that anything was going to happen with this rat?”

Here we go, I thought. I knew I’d have to watch this wily Frenchman. “I was excited, sir, simply because the Professor was excited,” I said. “He seemed to know something was going to happen. I can’t tell you how. Don’t forget, gentlemen, I was only a very young junior assistant. The Professor did not tell me all his secrets.”

“I see,” the foreign minister said. “Then let us proceed.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Well, we were watching the rat. At first, nothing happened. Then suddenly, after exactly nine minutes, the rat became very still. He crouched down, quivering all over. He was looking at the females. He crept toward the nearest one and grabbed her by the skin of her neck with his teeth and mounted her. It did not take long. He was very fierce with her and very swift. But here’s the extraordinary thing. The moment the rat had finished copulating with the first female, he grabbed a second one and set about her in just the same way. Then he took a third female rat, and a fourth, and a fifth. He was absolutely tireless. He went from one female to another, fornicating with each in turn until he had covered all ten of them. Even then, gentlemen, he hadn’t had enough!”

“Good gracious me!” Sir Charles murmured. “What a curious experiment.”

“I should add,” I went on, “that rats are not normally promiscuous creatures. They are in fact rather moderate in their sexual habits.”

“Are you sure of that?” the French foreign minister said. “I thought rats were extraordinarily lascivious.”

“No, sir,” I answered firmly. “Rats are actually very intelligent and gentle creatures. They are easy to domesticate.”

“Go on, then,” Sir Charles said. “What did all this tell you?”

“Professor Yousoupoff got very excited. ‘Oswaldsky!’ he shouted—that’s what he called me. ‘Oswaldsky, my boy, I think I have discovered the absolutely greatest most powerful sexual stimulant in the whole history of mankind!’

“‘I think you have, too,’ I said. We were still standing by the cage of rats and the male rat was still leaping on the wretched females, one after the other. Within an hour, he had collapsed from exhaustion. ‘We give him too big a dose,’ the Professor said.”

“This rat,” the Mexican ambassador said, “what came of him in the end?”

“He died,” I said.

“From too much women, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

The little Mexican clapped his hands together hard and cried out, “That is exactly how I wish to go when I die! From too much women!”

“From too much goats and donkeys iss more like it in Mexico,” the German ambassador snorted.

“That’s enough of that, Wolfgang,” Sir Charles said. “Let’s not start any wars. We are listening to a most interesting story. Carry on, my boy.”

“So the next time,” I said, “we isolated only twenty of these tiny red microscopic nuclei. We inserted them in a pellet of bread and then went out looking for a very old man. With the help of the local newspaper, we found our old man in Newmarket—that’s a town not far from Cambridge. His name was Mr. Sawkins, and he was one hundred and two years old. He was suffering from advanced senility. His mind was wandering and he had to be fed by spoon. He had not been out of bed for seven years. The Professor and I knocked on the door of his house and his daughter, aged eighty, opened it. ‘I am Professor Yousoupoff,’ the Professor announced. ‘I have discovered a great medicine to help old people. Will you allow us to give some to your poor old father?’

“‘You can give ‘im anything you damn well please,’ the daughter said. ‘The old fool doesn’t know what’s goin’ on from one day to the next. ‘E’s a flamin’ nuisance.’

“We went upstairs and the Professor somehow managed to poke the bread pellet down the old man’s throat. I noted the time by my watch. ‘Let us retire to the Street outside and observe,’ the Professor said.

“We went out and stood in the street. I was counting each minute aloud as it went by. And then—you won’t believe this, gentlemen, but I swear it’s exactly what happened—precisely on the dot of nine minutes, there was a thunderous bellow from inside the Sawkins house. The front door burst open and the old man himself rushed out into the street. He was in bare feet, wearing dirty blueand-grey-striped pyjamas, and his long white hair was all over his shoulders. ‘I want me a woman!’ he bellowed. ‘I want me a woman and by God I’m goin’ to get me a woman!’ The Professor clutched my arm. ‘Don’t move!’ he ordered. ‘Just observe!’

“The eighty-year-old daughter came rushing out after the father. ‘Come back, you old fool!’ she yelled. ‘What the ‘ell d’you think you’re up to?’

“We were, by the way, in a little street with a row of identical connected houses on either side. Mr. Sawkins ignored his daughter and ran, he actually ran, to the nextdoor house. He started banging on the door with his fists. ‘Open up, Mrs. Twitchell!’ he bellowed. ‘Come on, my beauty, open up and let’s ‘ave a bit of fun!’

“I caught a glimpse of the terrified face of Mrs. Twitchell at the window. Then it went away. Mr. Sawkins, still bellowing, put his shoulder to the flimsy door and smashed the lock. He dived inside. We stayed out on the street, waiting for the next development. The Professor was very excited. He was jumping up and down in his funny black boots and shouting, ‘We have a breakthrough! We’ve done it! We shall rejuvenate the world!’

“Suddenly, piercing screams and yells came issuing from Mrs. Twitchell’s house. Neighbours were beginning to gather on the street. ‘Go in and get ‘im!’ shouted the old daughter. “E’s gone stark starin’ mad!’ Two men ran into the Twitchell house. There were sounds of a scuffle. Soon, out came the two men, frog-marching old Mr. Sawkins between them. ‘I ‘ad er!’ he was yelling. ‘I ‘ad the old bitch good and proper! I near rattled ‘er to death!’ At that point, the Professor and I moved quietly away from the scene.”

I paused in my story. Seven ambassadors, the foreign minister of France, the French army general, and the little Japanese man were all now leaning forward in their seats, their eyes upon me.

“Is this exactly what happened?” Sir Charles asked me.

“Every word of it, sir, is the gospel truth,” I lied. “When Professor Yousoupoff publishes his findings, the whole world will be reading what I have just told you.”

“So what happened next?” the Peruvian ambassador asked.

“From then on, it was comparatively simple,” I said. “The Professor conducted a series of experiments designed to discover what the proper absolutely safe dose should be for a normal adult male. For this, he used undergraduate volunteers. And you can be quite sure, gentlemen, that he had no trouble getting young men to come forward. As soon as the news spread around the university, there was a waiting list of over eight hundred. But to cut the story short, the Professor finally demonstrated that the safe dose was no more than five of those tiny microscopic nuclei from the pomegranate seed. So, using calcium carbonate as a base, he manufactured a pill containing exactly this quantity of the magic substance. And he proved beyond any doubt that just one of these pills would, in precisely nine minutes, turn any man, even a very old man, into a marvellously powerful sex-machine that was capable of pleasuring his partner for six hours nonstop, without exception.”

“Gott in Himmel!” shouted the German ambassador. “Ver can I get hold of ziss stuff?”

“Me too!” cried the Russian ambassador. “I haff priority claim because it voss invented by my countryman! I muss inform zee Tsar at vonce!”

Suddenly, they were all speaking at the same time. Where could they get it? They wanted it now! How much did it cost? They were willing to pay handsomely! And the little Japanese fellow sitting on my left leaned over and hissed, “You get me big supply of pills, yes. I give you very much money.”

“Now just a moment, gentlemen,” Sir Charles said, raising a wrinkled hand for silence. “Our young friend here has told us a fascinating story, but as he correctly pointed out, he was only a junior assistant to Professor whatever-his-name-is. I am quite sure, therefore, that he is not in a position to supply us with this remarkable new pill. Perhaps though, my dear Oswald”—and here Sir Charles leaned toward me and placed a withered hand gently on my forearm—”perhaps, my dear Oswald, you could put me in touch with the great Professor. One of my duties here at the embassy is to keep the Foreign Office informed of all new scientific discoveries.”

“I quite understand,” I said.

“If I could obtain a bottle of these pills, preferably a large bottle, I would send it straight to London.”

“And I vould send it to Petrograd,” said the Russian ambassador.

“And me to Budapest.”

“And me to Mexico City.”

“And me to Lima.”

“And me to Rome.”

“Rubbish!” cried the German ambassador. “You vant dem for yourselves, you dirty olt men!”

“Now then, Wolfgang,” Sir Charles said, squirming a bit.

“Vy not, my dear Sharles? I too vant dem for myself. For zee Kaiser as well, of course, but me first.”

I decided I rather liked the German ambassador. He was honest anyway.

“I think it best, gentlemen,” Sir Charles said, “if I myself make all the arrangements. I shall write personally to the Professor.”

“The Japanese people,” Mr. Mitsouko said, “are very interested in all massage techniques and hot baths and in all similar technological advances, especially the Emperor himself.”

I allowed them to finish. I was in control now and that gave me a good feeling. I helped myself to another glass of port but refused the huge cigar Sir Charles offered me. “Would you prefer a smaller one, dear boy?” he asked me eagerly. “Or a Turkish cigarette? I have some Balkan Sobranies.”

“No, thank you, sir,” I said. “But the port is delicious.”

“Help yourself, dear boy! Fill your glass!”

“I have some interesting news,” I said, and suddenly everyone became silent. The German ambassador cupped a hand behind his ear. The Russian leaned forward in his seat. So did all the rest of them.

“What I am about to tell you is extremely confidential,” I said. “May I rely upon all of you to keep it to yourselves?”

There was a chorus of “Yes, yes! Of course! Absolutely! Carry on, young fellow!”

“Thank you,” I said. “Now the point is this. As soon as I knew that I was going to Paris I decided I simply must take with me a supply of these pills, especially for my father’s great friend Sir Charles Makepiece.”

“My dear boy!” Sir Charles cried out. “What a generous thought!”

“I could not, of course, ask the Professor to give any of them to me,” I said. “He would never have agreed to that. After all, they are still on the secret list.”

“So what did you do?” asked Sir Charles. He was dribbling with excitement. “Did you purloin them?”

“Certainly not, sir,” I said. “Stealing is a criminal act.”

“Never mind about us, dear boy. We won’t tell a soul.”

“So vot did you do?” the German ambassador asked. “You say you haff dem and you didn’t steal dem?”

“I made them myself,” I said.

“Brilliant!” they cried. “Magnifique!”

“Having assisted the Professor at every stage,” I said, “I naturally knew exactly how to manufacture these pills. So I . . . well . . . I simply made them in his laboratory each day when he was out to lunch.” Slowly, I reached behind me and took one small round box from my tail-coat pocket. I placed it on the low table. I opened the lid. And there, lying in its little nest of cotton-wool, was a single scarlet pill.

Everyone leaned forward to look. Then I saw the plump white hand of the German ambassador sliding across the surface of the table toward the box like a weasel stalking a mouse. Sir Charles saw it, too. He smacked the palm of his own hand on top of the German’s, pinning it down. “Now, Wolfgang,” he said, “don’t be impatient.”

“I vant zee pill!” Ambassador Wolfgang shouted.

Sir Charles put his other hand over the pill-box and kept it there. “Do you have more?” he asked me.

I fished in my tail-coat pockets and brought out nine more boxes. “There is one for each of you,” I said.

Eager hands reached across, grabbing the little boxes. “I pay,” said Mr. Mitsouko. “How much you want?”

“No,” I said. “These are presents. Try them out, gentlemen. See what you think.”

Sir Charles was studying the label on the box. “Ah-ha,” he said. “I see you have your address printed here.”

“That’s just in case,” I said.

“In case of what?”

“In case anyone wishes to get a second pill,” I said.

I noticed that the German ambassador had taken out a little book and was making notes. “Sir,” I said to him, “I expect you are thinking of telling your scientists to investigate the seed of the pomegranate. Am I not right?”

“Zatt iss exactly vot I am tinking,” he said.

“No good,” I said. “Waste of time.”

“May I ask vy?”

“Because it’s not the pomegranate,” I said. “It’s something else.”

“So you lie to us!”

“It is the only untruth I have told you in the entire story,” I said. “Forgive me, but I had to do it. I had to protect Professor Yousoupoff’s secret. It was a point of honour. All the rest is true. Believe me, it’s true. It is especially true that each of you has in his possession the most powerful rejuvenator the world has ever known.”

At that point, the ladies returned, and each man in our group quickly and rather surreptitiously pocketed his pillbox. They stood up. They greeted their wives. I noticed that Sir Charles had suddenly become absurdly jaunty. He hopped across the room and splashed a silly sort of kiss smack on Lady Makepiece’s scarlet lips. She gave him one of those cool what-on-earth-was-that-for looks. Unabashed, he took her arm and led her across the room into a throng of people. I last saw Mr. Mitsouko prowling around the floor inspecting the womanflesh at very close quarters, like a horse-dealer examining a bunch of mares on the marketplace. I slipped quietly away.

Half an hour later, I was back at my boarding-house in the avenue Marceau. The family had retired and all the lamps were out, but as I passed the bedroom of Mademoiselle Nicole in the upstairs corridor, I could see in the crack between the door and the floor a flicker of candlelight. The little trollop was waiting for me again. I decided not to go in. There was nothing new for me in there. Even at this early stage in my career, I had already decided that the only women who interested me were new women. Second time round was no good. It was like reading a detective novel twice over. You knew exactly what was going to happen next. The fact that I had recently broken this rule by visiting Mademoiselle Nicole a second time was beside the point. That was done simply to test my Blister Beetle powder. And by the way, this principle of no-woman-morethan-once is one that I have stuck to rigorously all my life, and I commend it to all men of action who enjoy variety.