y superior room in the
Place Saint-Michel, near the Ecole de Medecine, to which I moved my
luggage.

I was very much astonished, while sitting alone and rather blue and
overcast in my room, at the sudden entrance of a second cousin of mine
named Frank Fisher, who was studying medicine in Paris. He had by some
odd chance seen my name registered in the newspapers as having arrived at
the hotel, and lost no time in looking me up. He lived on the other side
of the Seine in the Boule Rouge, near the Rue Helder, a famous happy
hunting-ground for _les biches_--I mean kids or the very dear. I must go
forthwith to his quarters and dine, which I did, and so my introduction
to Paris was fairly begun.

I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the Sorbonne, all or any
lectures by everybody, including a very dull series on German literature
by Philarete Chasles. I read books. _Inter alia_, I went through
Dante's "Inferno" in Italian aided by Rivarol's translation, of which I
possessed the _very copy_ stamped with the royal arms, and containing the
author's autograph, which had been presented to the King. I picked it up
on the Quai for a franc, for which sum I also obtained a first edition of
_Melusine_, which Mr. Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful
rarity. And I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Rachel, and
Frederic Lemaitre, and Mlle. Dejazet, and many more at the great
theatres, and attended assiduously at Bobinot's, which was a very small
theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented entirely by students and
grisettes. I went to many a ball, both great and small, including the
masked ones of the Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was
dissipation and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagination,
ending with the _grande ronde infernale_. I made many acquaintances, and
if they were not by any means all highly respectable, they were at least
generally very singular or notorious. One day I would dine at a place
outside the Barrier, where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a
franc, _vin compris_, and where the honoured guest at the head of the
table was the _chef des claqueurs_ or head of the paid applauders at all
the theatres. Then it would be at a private _table-d'hote_ of
_lorettes_, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing. I
heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way
into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled