midday
When obliged , for reasons which he never specified , to bring his residence in Paris to a close , he had fallen back on Geneva ; he had broken his fall at the Pension Beaurepas . Geneva was , after all , more like Paris , and at a Genevese boarding-house there was sure to be plenty of Americans with whom one could talk about the French metropolis . M. Pigeonneau was a little lean man , with a large narrow nose , who sat a great deal in the garden , reading with the aid of a large magnifying glass a volume from the _ cabinet de lecture _ . One day , a fortnight after my arrival at the Pension Beaurepas , I came back , rather earlier than usual from my academic session ; it wanted half an hour of the midday breakfast . I went into the salon with the design of possessing myself of the day 's _ Galignani _ before one of the little English old maids should have removed it to her virginal bower -- a privilege to which Madame Beaurepas frequently alluded as one of the attractions of the establishment . In the salon I found a new-comer , a tall gentleman in a high black hat , whom I immediately recognised as a compatriot . I had often seen him , or his equivalent , in the hotel parlours of my native land .