wrong; it was against the laws; it partook, in a very dingy

manner, of adventure. Were it known, it was the sort of

exploit that disconsidered a young man for good with the more

serious classes, but gave him a standing with the riotous.

And yet Colette's was not a hell; it could not come, without

vaulting hyperbole, under the rubric of a gilded saloon; and,

if it was a sin to go there, the sin was merely local and

municipal. Colette (whose name I do not know how to spell,

for I was never in epistolary communication with that

hospitable outlaw) was simply an unlicensed publican, who

gave suppers after eleven at night, the Edinburgh hour of

closing. If you belonged to a club, you could get a much

better supper at the same hour, and lose not a jot in public

esteem. But if you lacked that qualification, and were an

hungered, or inclined toward conviviality at unlawful hours,

Colette's was your only port. You were very ill-supplied.

The company was not recruited from the Senate or the Church,

though the Bar was very well represented on the only occasion

on which I flew in the face of my country's laws, and, taking

my reputation in my hand, penetrated into that grim supper-

house. And Colette's frequenters, thrillingly conscious of

wrong-doing and 'that two-handed engine (the policeman) at

the door,' were perhaps inclined to somewhat feverish excess.

But the place was in no sense a very bad one; and it is

somewhat strange to me, at this distance of time, how it had

acquired its dangerous repute.

Tales and Fantasies