The taller man, neither young, neither old, and, like his friend, without a grey hair, burst out laughing after the disappearance of the second cognac. "I say, old pal, who was it wrote that brandy was for heroes? Kipling? What?" The other man, stockily built, foreign-looking, answered in a contemptuous tone ("sneering-like," as my informant put it):
"Where's your memory? Gone to rack and ruin like your ideals, I suppose! Kipling! What do such youngsters know? Doctor Johnson or Walter Savage Landor was the originator of the lying epigram; after them Byron gobbled it up, as he gobbled up most of the good things of his generation, and after him, the deluge of this mediocre century. When I told Byron this, at Milan, I think it was, he vowed me an ass. Now, it was Doctor Johnson."
"Cheer up, it's not so bad. I remember once at Paris, or was it Vienna, you said the same thing about----" and here followed a strange name.
"And, anyhow, you are mixing dates; Landor followed Byron, please, but I suppose he said it first. I told Metternich of your bon-mot, and, egad! he laughed, did that old parchment face. As for Bonaparte, upstart and charlatan, he was too selfish to smile at anybody's wit but his own, and little he had. Do you remember the Congress of Vienna?"
"Some such year. Or was it in 1750 when we saw Casanova at Venice? Well--" At this point the alarm-signal went off, and the mob went over to the opera. The young bartender's heart was beating so fast that it "leapt up in his bosom," as he described it. Two middle-aged men talking of a century ago as calmly as if they had spoken of yesterday flustered him a bit. He heard the dates. He noticed the perfectly natural manner in which events were mentioned. There was no mystification. For the first time in his life Michael was sorry the between-act pause was so short, and he longed for the next one, though fatigued from the labours of the last. Would these gentlemen return for more cognac? In an hour they came back with the crowd, again drank old five-star brandy, and gossiped about a lot of incomprehensible things that had evidently taken place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century; at least, Michael overheard them disputing dates, and one of them bet the other that the big fire in London occurred in 1666, and referred the question to Mr. Peppers, or Peps--some such name.