them out of all
their money. When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in
those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty would not
now purchase. When _au sec_, I fed at Flictoteau's--we called him
_l'empoisonneur_--where hundreds of students got a meal of three courses
with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not so bad either, for thirty sous.

It happened one night at Bobinot's that I sat in the front row of the
stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and respectable young girl,
with her elder relations or friends. How it happened I do not know, but
they all went out, leaving the young lady by me, and I did not speak to
her.

Which "point" was at once seized by the house. The pit, as if moved by
one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, "_Il l'embrassera_!" (He will
kiss her), to which the gallery replied, "_Il ne l'embrassera pas_."

So they kept it up and down alternately like see-sawing, to an
intonation; and be it remarked, by the way, that in French such a
monotonous bore is known as a _scie_ or saw, as may be read in my romance
in the French tongue entitled _Le Lutin du Chateau_, which was, I regret
to say, refused by Hachette the publisher on account of its freedom from
strait-laced, blue-nosed, Puritanical conventionalism, albeit he praised
its literary merit and style, as did sundry other French scholars, if I
may say it--who should not!

I saw that something must be done; so, rising, I waved my glove, and
there was dead silence. Then I began at the top of my voice, in
impassioned style in German, an address about matters and things in
general, intermingled with insane quotations from Latin, Slavonian,
anything. A change came o'er the spirit of the dream of my auditors,
till at last they "took," and gave me three cheers. I had _sold_ the
house!

There was in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the Hotel de Luxembourg.
It was the fragment of a very old palace which had borne that name. It
had still a magnificent Renaissance staircase, which bore witness to its
former glory. Washington Irving, in one of his earlier tales, describes
this very house and the rooms which I occupied in it so accurately, that
I think he must have dwelt there. He tells that a student once, during
the Revolution, finding a young lady in the street, took her home with
him to that house. She had a black ribbon round her neck. He twitched
it away, when--off fell her head. She had been gui