ts, and celebrities of all kinds, as well as young and
pretty women. As the season was late, the gathering this evening was not
large. However, neglecting the unimportant gentlemen whose ancestors had
perhaps been fabricated by Pere Issacar, Papillon pointed out to his
friend a few celebrities. One, with the badge of the Legion of Honor upon
his coat, which looked as if it had come from the stall of an old-clothes
man, was Forgerol, the great geologist, the most grasping of scientific
men; Forgerol, rich from his twenty fat sinecures, for whom one of his
confreres composed this epitaph in advance: "Here lies Forgerol, in the
only place he did not solicit."

That grand old man, with the venerable, shaky head, whose white, silky
hair seemed to shed blessings and benedictions, was M. Dussant du Fosse,
a philanthropist by profession, honorary president of all charitable
works; senator, of course, since he was one of France's peers, and who in
a few years after the Prussians had left, and the battles were over,
would sink into suspicious affairs and end in the police courts.

That old statesman, whose rough, gray hairs were like brushes for
removing cobwebs, a pedant from head to foot, leaning in his favorite
attitude against the mantel decorated only with flowers, by his mulish
obstinacy contributed much to the fall of the last monarchy. He was
respectfully listened to and called "dear master" by a republican orator,
whose red-hot convictions began to ooze away, and who, soon after, as
minister of the Liberal empire, did his best to hasten the government's
downfall.

Although Amedee was of an age to respect these notabilities, whom
Papillon pointed out to him with so much deference, they did not impress
him so much as certain visitors who belonged to the world of art and
letters. In considering them the young man was much surprised and a
little saddened at the want of harmony that he discovered between the
appearance of the men and the nature of their talents. The poet Leroy des
Saules had the haughty attitude and the Apollo face corresponding to the
noble and perfect beauty of his verses; but Edouard Durocher, the
fashionable painter of the nineteenth century, was a large,
common-looking man with a huge moustache, like that of a book agent; and
Theophile de Sonis, the elegant story-writer, the worldly romancer, had a
copper-colored nose, and his harsh beard was like that of a chief in a
custom-house.

What attracted Am