hat! Gustave!" exclaimed he, joyously.

Yes! Gustave, the former "dunce," the one they had called "Good-luck"
because his father had made an immense fortune in guano. Not one bit
changed was Gustave! The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion. But
what style! English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the horseshoe
scarfpin in his necktie. One would say that he was a horse-jockey dressed
in his Sunday best. What was this comical Gustave doing now? Nothing. His
father has made two hundred thousand pounds' income dabbling in certain
things, and Gustave is getting acquainted with that is all--which means
to wake up every morning toward noon, with a bitter mouth caused from the
last night's supper, and to be surprised every morning at dawn at the
baccarat table, after spending five hours saying "Bac!" in a stifled,
hollow voice. Gustave understands life, and, taking into consideration
his countenance like a death's-head, it may lead him to make the
acquaintance of something entirely different. But who thinks of death at
his age? Gustave wishes to know life, and when a fit of coughing
interrupts him in one of his idiotic bursts of laughter, his comrades at
the Gateux Club tell him that he has swallowed the wrong way. Wretched
Gustave, so be it!

Meanwhile the boy with the juggler's motions appeared with the soup, and
made exactly the same gestures when he uncovered the tureen as Robert
Houdin would have made, and one was surprised not to see a bunch of
flowers or a live rabbit fly out. But no! it was simply soup, and the
guests attacked it vigorously and in silence. After the Rhine wine all
tongues were unloosened, and as soon as they had eaten the Normandy
sole-oh! what glorious appetites at twenty years of age!--the five young
men all talked at once. What a racket! Exclamations crossed one another
like rockets. Gustave, forcing his weak voice, boasted of the
performances of a "stepper" that he had tried that morning in the Allee
des Cavaliers. He would have been much better off had he stayed in his
bed and taken cod-liver oil. Maurice called out to the boy to uncork the
Chateau-Leoville. Amedee, having spoken of his drama to the comedian
Gorju, called Jocquelet, that person, speaking in his bugle-like voice
that came through his bugle-shaped nose, set himself up at once as a man
of experience, giving his advice, and quoting, with admiration, Talma's
famous speech to a dramatic poet: "Above all, no fine verses!" Arth