ed a Raton--much as, till the sound of the last
trumpet, men very much worse than Victor de Mauleon will use men very
much better than Armand Monnier, if the Armand Monniers disdain the
modesty of an Isaac Newton on hearing that a theorem to which he had
given all the strength of his patient intellect was disputed: "It may be
so;" meaning, I suppose, that it requires a large amount of experience
ascertained before a man of much knowledge becomes that which a man of
little knowledge is at a jump-the fanatic of an experiment untried.

CHAPTER II.

Scarcely had De Mauleon quitted Lemercier before the latter was joined
by two loungers scarcely less famished than himself--Savarin and De
Breze. Like himself, too, both had been sufferers from illness, though
not of a nature to be consigned to an hospital. All manner of diseases
then had combined to form the pestilence which filled the streets with
unregarded hearses--bronchitis, pneumonia, smallpox, a strange sort of
spurious dysentery much more speedily fatal than the genuine. The three
men, a year before so sleek, looked like ghosts under the withering sky;
yet all three retained embers of the native Parisian humour, which their
very breath on meeting sufficed to kindle up into jubilant sparks or
rapid flashes.

"There are two consolations," said Savarin, as the friends strolled or
rather crawled towards the Boulevards--"two consolations for the gourmet
and for the proprietor in these days of trial for the gourmand, because
the price of truffles is come down."

"Truffles!" gasped De Breze, with watering mouth; "impossible! They are
gone with the age of gold."

"Not so. I speak on the best authority--my laundress; for she attends
the succursale in the Rue de Chateaudun; and if the poor woman, being,
luckily for me, a childless widow, gets a morsel she can spare, she
sells it to me."

"Sells it!" feebly exclaimed Lemercier. "Croesus! you have money then,
and can buy?"

"Sells it--on credit! I am to pension her for life if I live to have
money again. Don't interrupt me. This honest woman goes this morning to
the succursale. I promise myself a delicious bifteck of horse. She gains
the succursale, and the employee informs her that there is nothing left
in his store except--truffles. A glut of those in the market allows him
to offer her a bargain-seven francs la boite. Send me seven francs, De
Breze, and you shall share the banquet."

De Breze shook his head expres