face of the plague, and it will run away from you."

"And right enough too, for very stupid work it does," added a pretty
little Columbine, emptying her glass.

"You are right, my darling; it is intolerably stupid work," answered
the Clown belonging to the Columbine; "here you are very quiet, enjoying
life, and all on a sudden you die with an atrocious grimace. Well! what
then? Clever, isn't it? I ask you, what does it prove?"

"It proves," replied an illustrious painter of the romantic school,
disguised like a Roman out of one of David's pictures, "it proves that
the Cholera is a wretched colorist, for he has nothing but a dirty
green on his pallet. Evidently he is a pupil of Jacobus, that king of
classical painters, who are another species of plagues."

"And yet, master," added respectfully a pupil of the great painter, "I
have seen some cholera patients whose convulsions were rather fine, and
their dying looks first-rate!"

"Gentlemen," cried a sculptor of no less celebrity, "the question
lies in a nutshell. The Cholera is a detestable colorist, but a good
draughtsman. He shows you the skeleton in no time. By heaven! how he
strips off the flesh!--Michael Angelo would be nothing to him."

"True," cried they all, with one voice; "the Cholera is a bad colorist,
but a good draughtsman."

"Moreover, gentlemen," added Ninny Moulin, with comic gravity, "this
plague brings with it a providential lesson, as the great Bossuet would
have said."

"The lesson! the lesson!"

"Yes, gentlemen; I seem to hear a voice from above, proclaiming: 'Drink
of the best, empty your purse, and kiss your neighbor's wife; for your
hours are perhaps numbered, unhappy wretch!'"

So saying, the orthodox Silenus took advantage of a momentary absence
of mind on the part of Modeste, his neighbor, to imprint on the blooming
cheek of LOVE a long, loud kiss. The example was contagious, and a storm
of kisses was mingled with bursts of laughter.

"Ha! blood and thunder!" cried the great painter as he gayly threatened
Ninny Moulin; "you are very lucky that to-morrow will perhaps be the end
of the world, or else I should pick a quarrel with you for having kissed
my lovely LOVE."

"Which proves to you, O Rubens! O Raphael! the thousand advantages of
the Cholera, whom I declare to be essentially sociable and caressing."

"And philanthropic," said one of the guests; "thanks to him, creditors
take care of the health of their debtors. This morning