'Good wine is a most interesting study - most interesting, I can assure you.'
We were practically the only people in the long, tall room.
We spoke quietly as we lay relaxed beside each other in our chairs, with long pauses between sentences.
When you are tired there is pleasure in a conversation taken in sips, like old brandy.
I said: 'I used to go to Exeter a good deal when I was a boy.'
The old man said: 'I know Exeter very well indeed.
I lived there for forty years.'
'My uncle had a house at Starcross.' And I told him the name.
He smiled.
'I used to act for him.
We were great friends.
But that's a long time ago now.'
'Act for him?'
'My firm used to act for him.
I was a partner in a firm of solicitors, Fulljames and Howard.'
And then, reminiscent, he told me a good deal about my uncle and about the family, about his horses and about his tenants.
The talk became more and more a monologue; a word or two from me slipped in now and then kept him going.
In his quiet voice he built up for me a picture of the days that now are gone for ever, the days that I remember as a boy.
I lay smoking quietly in my chair, with the fatigue soaking out of me.
It was a perfect godsend to find somebody who could talk of other things besides the war.
The minds of most men revolve round this war or the last war, and there is a nervous urge in them which brings the conversation round to war again.
But war seems to have passed by this lean old man.
He turned for his interests to milder topics.
Presently, we were talking about fishing.
He was an ardent fisherman, and I have fished a little.
Most naval officers take a rod and a gun with them in the ship.
I had fished on odd afternoons ashore in many parts of the world, usually with the wrong sort of fly and unsuccessfully, but he was an expert.
He had fished from end to end of these islands and over a great part of the Continent.
In the old days the life of a country solicitor was not an exacting one.
When he spoke of fishing and of France, it put me in mind of an experience of my own.
'I saw some chaps in France doing a damn funny sort of fly fishing,' I said.
'They had a great bamboo pole about twenty-five feet long with the line tied on the end of it - no reel.
They used wet flies, and trailed them about in rough water.'
He smiled. 'That's right,' he said.
'That's how they do it.
Where did you see them fishing like that?'
'Near Gex,' I said.
'Practically in Switzerland.'
He smiled reflectively.
'I know that country very well - very well indeed,' he said.
'Saint-Claude. Do you know Saint-Claude?'
I shook my head.
'I don't know the Jura.
That's somewhere over by Morez, isn't it?'
'Yes - not very far from Morez.'
He was silent for a few moments; we rested together in that quiet room.
Presently he said: 'I wanted to try that wet fly fishing in those streams this summer.
It's not bad fun, you know.
You have to know where the fish go for their food.
It's not just a matter of dabbing the flies about anywhere.