King of
Assyria, Persia, Bactria, Mesopotamia, and other geographical
divisions peculiar to old Professor du Bocage, who continued the work
of d'Anville, the creator of the East of antiquity. This nickname,
which gave Carabine's guests laughter for a quarter of an hour, gave
rise to a series of over-free jests, to which the Academy could not
award the Montyon prize; but among which the name was taken up, to
rest thenceforth on the curly mane of the handsome Baron, called by
Josepha the splendid Brazilian--as one might say a splendid
_Catoxantha_.

Carabine, the loveliest of her tribe, whose delicate beauty and
amusing wit had snatched the sceptre of the Thirteenth Arrondissement
from the hands of Mademoiselle Turquet, better known by the name of
Malaga--Mademoiselle Seraphine Sinet (this was her real name) was to
du Tillet the banker what Josepha Mirah was to the Duc d'Herouville.

Now, on the morning of the very day when Madame de Saint-Esteve had
prophesied success to Victorin, Carabine had said to du Tillet at
about seven o'clock:

"If you want to be very nice, you will give me a dinner at the _Rocher
de Cancale_ and bring Combabus. We want to know, once for all, whether
he has a mistress.--I bet that he has, and I should like to win."

"He is still at the Hotel des Princes; I will call," replied du
Tillet. "We will have some fun. Ask all the youngsters--the youngster
Bixiou, the youngster Lora, in short, all the clan."

At half-past seven that evening, in the handsomest room of the
restaurant where all Europe has dined, a splendid silver service was
spread, made on purpose for entertainments where vanity pays the bill
in bank-notes. A flood of light fell in ripples on the chased rims;
waiters, whom a provincial might have taken for diplomatists but for
their age, stood solemnly, as knowing themselves to be overpaid.

Five guests had arrived, and were waiting for nine more. These were
first and foremost Bixiou, still flourishing in 1843, the salt of
every intellectual dish, always supplied with fresh wit--a phenomenon
as rare in Paris as virtue is; Leon de Lora, the greatest living
painter of landscape and the sea who has this great advantage over all
his rivals, that he has never fallen below his first successes. The
courtesans could never dispense with these two kings of ready wit. No
supper, no dinner, was possible without them.

Seraphine Sinet, _dite_ Carabine, as the mistress _en titre_ of the
Amphitr