MONSIEUR SEGOTIN'S
STORY
In the days before the war I used to go every summer to Blankenberghe. So did Monsieur Segotin. I smoke; he sold cigarettes; and thus it came about that we got to know one another.
M. Segotin's tobacco shop was a small but a very good one. It had an admirable position on the digue close to the Casino and the biggest hotels, and it did a thriving trade in choice cigars among the rich men who were always in that part of the town. I was a humble enough customer, but I was an Englishman, and I had a fair command of French, and so M. Segotin honoured me with his approval. In those days Blankenberghe was a Paradise of the holiday-making German, and there was always some genial manufacturer from the Rhine Province or some jolly Westphalian coalowner or some hearty Berlin stockbroker choosing his fat Corona across the counter of M. Segotin, but to none of them was M. Segotin more than distantly polite. "The money of those people," he said to me, one time, "is genuine enough. As for their
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