And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales this is your host John

Heggdorn today a great story from Giedemopazat called Tombstones hope you enjoy

the five friends had finished dinner, five men of the world, mature, rich, three married, the two others bachelors. They met like this every month in the memory of their youth and

after dinner they chatted until two o'clock in the morning. Having remained

intimate friends and enjoying each other society they probably considered these the pleasantest evenings of their lives.

They talked on every subject, especially of what interested in amused Parisians.

Their conversation was, as in the majority of salons elsewhere, a verbal

rehash of what they had read in the morning papers. One of the most lively of them was Joseph de Bardon, a celibate living the Parisian life in its fullest and most whimsical manner.

He was not a debauch nor depraved, but a singular happy fellow, still young, for he was scarcely

forty.

A man of the world in its widest and best sense, gifted with a brilliant, but not profound,

mind, with much varied knowledge but no true

erudition ready comprehension without true understanding he drew from his

observations his adventures from everything he saw, met with and found,

anecdotes at once comical and philosophical, and made humorous remarks that gave him a great reputation for cleverness in society.

He was the after-dinner speaker and had his own story each time, upon which they counted,

and he talked without having to be coached.

As he sat smoking, his elbows on the table,

a petite veer half full beside his plate,

half torpid in an atmosphere of tobacco blended with

steaming coffee. He seemed to be perfectly at home. He said between two whiffs,

A curious thing happened to me some time ago.

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