abbages, he is at once aware of the fact, and the failure
of the beetroot crop is brought home to his mind. A slander, old in
circulation in Lucien's time, connected the appearance of beef-steaks
with a mortality among horseflesh.

Few Parisian restaurants are so well worth seeing. Every one at
Flicoteaux's is young; you see nothing but youth; and although earnest
faces and grave, gloomy, anxious faces are not lacking, you see hope and
confidence and poverty gaily endured. Dress, as a rule, is careless, and
regular comers in decent clothes are marked exceptions. Everybody knows
at once that something extraordinary is afoot: a mistress to visit, a
theatre party, or some excursion into higher spheres. Here, it is said,
friendships have been made among students who became famous men in after
days, as will be seen in the course of this narrative; but with the
exception of a few knots of young fellows from the same part of France
who make a group about the end of a table, the gravity of the diners is
hardly relaxed. Perhaps this gravity is due to the catholicity of the
wine, which checks good fellowship of any kind.

Flicoteaux's frequenters may recollect certain sombre and mysterious
figures enveloped in the gloom of the chilliest penury; these beings
would dine there daily for a couple of years and then vanish, and the
most inquisitive regular comer could throw no light on the disappearance
of such goblins of Paris. Friendships struck up over Flicoteaux's
dinners were sealed in neighboring cafes in the flames of heady punch,
or by the generous warmth of a small cup of black coffee glorified by a
dash of something hotter and stronger.

Lucien, like all neophytes, was modest and regular in his habits in
those early days at the Hotel de Cluny. After the first unlucky venture
in fashionable life which absorbed his capital, he threw himself into
his work with the first earnest enthusiasm, which is frittered away so
soon over the difficulties or in the by-paths of every life in Paris.
The most luxurious and the very poorest lives are equally beset with
temptations which nothing but the fierce energy of genius or the morose
persistence of ambition can overcome.

Lucien used to drop in at Flicoteaux's about half-past four, having
remarked the advantages of an early arrival; the bill-of-fare was more
varied, and there was still some chance of obtaining the dish of
your choice. Like all imaginative persons, he had taken a fancy t