f an art which workmen pleasantly call "tipple-ography," an
art held in high esteem by the divine author of _Pantagruel_; though of
late, by reason of the persecution of societies yclept of Temperance,
the cult has fallen, day by day, into disuse.

Jerome-Nicolas Sechard, bound by the laws of etymology to be a dry
subject, suffered from an inextinguishable thirst. His wife, during
her lifetime, managed to control within reasonable bounds the passion
for the juice of the grape, a taste so natural to the bear that M. de
Chateaubriand remarked it among the ursine tribes of the New World.
But philosophers inform us that old age is apt to revert to the habits
of youth, and Sechard senior is a case in point--the older he grew,
the better he loved to drink. The master-passion had given a stamp of
originality to an ursine physiognomy; his nose had developed till it
reached the proportions of a double great-canon A; his veined cheeks
looked like vine-leaves, covered, as they were, with bloated patches
of purple, madder red, and often mottled hues; till altogether, the
countenance suggested a huge truffle clasped about by autumn vine
tendrils. The little gray eyes, peering out from beneath thick
eyebrows like bushes covered with snow, were agleam with the cunning
of avarice that had extinguished everything else in the man, down to
the very instinct of fatherhood. Those eyes never lost their cunning
even when disguised in drink. Sechard put you in mind of one of La
Fontaine's Franciscan friars, with the fringe of grizzled hair still
curling about his bald pate. He was short and corpulent, like one of
the old-fashioned lamps for illumination, that burn a vast deal of oil
to a very small piece of wick; for excess of any sort confirms the
habit of body, and drunkenness, like much study, makes the fat man
stouter, and the lean man leaner still.

For thirty years Jerome-Nicolas-Sechard had worn the famous municipal
three-cornered hat, which you may still see here and there on the head
of the towncrier in out-of-the-way places. His breeches and waistcoat
were of greenish velveteen, and he wore an old-fashioned brown
greatcoat, gray cotton stockings, and shoes with silver buckles to
them. This costume, in which the workman shone through the burgess,
was so thoroughly in keeping with the man's character, defects, and
way of life, that he might have come ready dressed into the world. You
could no more imagine him apart from his clothes th