dear friend, for your own sake and for ours, to follow the
precept of Denis Diderot: "My friends, write stories; while one writes
them he amuses himself, and the story of life goes on, and that is less
gay than the stories we can tell."

I do not know precisely whether these last words, which are slightly
pessimistic, are those of the good Diderot himself. But they are
those of a Parisian of 1892, who has been able to forget his cares and
annoyances in reading the story that you have told so charmingly.

With much affection to you, and wishing good luck to Zibeline, I am

Your friend, JULES CLARETIE
de l'Academie Francaise.
APRIL 26, 1892.

ZIBELINE

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I. LES FRERES-PROVENCAUX.

In the days of the Second Empire, the Restaurant des Freres-Provencaux
still enjoyed a wide renown to which its fifty years of existence had
contributed more than a little to heighten its fame.

This celebrated establishment was situated near the Beaujolais Gallery
of the Palais-Royal, close to the narrow street leading to the Rue
Vivienne, and it had been the rendezvous of epicures, either residents
of Paris or birds of passage, since the day it was opened.

On the ground floor was the general dining-room, the gathering-place for
honest folk from the provinces or from other lands; the next floor had
been divided into a succession of private rooms, comfortably furnished,
where, screened behind thick curtains, dined somewhat "irregular"
patrons: lovers who were in either the dawn, the zenith, or the decline
of their often ephemeral fancies. On the top floor, spacious salons,
richly decorated, were used for large and elaborate receptions of
various kinds.

At times the members of certain social clubs gave in these rooms
subscription balls of anacreontic tendencies, the feminine element
of which was recruited among the popular gay favorites of the period.
Occasionally, also, young fellows about town, of different social rank,
but brought together by a pursuit of amusement in common, met here on
neutral ground, where, after a certain hour, the supper-table was turned
into a gaming-table, enlivened by the clinking of glasses and the rattle
of the croupier's rake, and where to the excitement of good cheer was
added that of high play, with its alternations of unexpected gains and
disastrous losses.

It was at a reunion of this kind, on the last evening in the month
of May, 1862