The apple-seller!' I said, astonished. 'But I don't know any apple-sellers.'
My friend was happy to explain. 'Some minutes ago we passed an apple-seller, who was carrying a big box of apples on his head, taking them to the fruit market. He didn't see you, and you had to jump out of his way. There were holes in the street, and you turned your foot in one of these holes and nearly fell.'
I remembered this now, but how did the apple-seller take us to Chantilly?
'You looked around,' my friend went on, 'and saw all the other holes and broken stones in the street, and then you looked up, a little angrily, to see the name of the street. You were thinking, I am sure, that it was a dangerous street to walk down in the dark, when you could not easily see the holes.
'Then we turned a corner into the Rue Racine. Here, the stones were new and unbroken, and you looked up, pleased, to find the name of this street. This name began a new thought. You smiled a little and shook your head.
The famous Racine, who wrote a play about Phaedra in 1677, was a better writer than Chantilly will ever be. And you remembered that when Chantilly's book first came out, the bookshops called Chantilly "the new Racine".
Everybody in Paris laughed at poor Chantilly because of that. I was sure that you were thinking of that when you smiled. And when you shook your head, I knew you were thinking of poor Chantilly's book.'