the
flavour and aroma of the best butter from Brittany and Normandy. M.
Richard, the maire of La Villette, attempts similar experiments with
animal offal, which M. Dumas, the great savant, declares highly
satisfactory. M. Riche, one of the superior officials of the Mint,
transforms bullock's blood into black puddings, which are voted superior
to those hitherto made with pig's blood. The nourishing properties of
gelatine are demonstrated in an equally scientific manner, and the
Academie des Sciences gradually becomes the rendezvous of the fair ones
of Paris, who come to take lessons in the culinary art.

"Mais, monsieur," says one, "maintenant que nous avons du beurre,
veuillez nous dire d'ou viendront nos epinards?"[84]

[Footnote 84: "Mettre du beurre dans ses epinards," means,
figuratively, to increase one's comforts.--EDITOR.]

"Don't let that trouble you, madame," is the answer; "if you will honour
us with your presence next week, one of our learned friends from the
Jardin des Plantes will tell you how to grow salads, and perhaps
asparagus, on your balcony and in front of your windows, in less than a
fortnight."

The learned professor is not trying to mystify his charming
interlocutor; he honestly believes in what he says: and, a week later,
when "the friend from the Jardin des Plantes" has spoken, there is a
wonderful run on all the seed-shops near the Chatelet, every one tries
to borrow flower-pots from his neighbours, and barrow-loads of mould are
being trundled in long lines into Paris. Wherever one goes, the eye
meets careful housewives bending over wooden boxes on the balconies; M.
Philippe Lockroy, the eminent actor and dramatist, the father of M.
Edouard Lockroy, the future minister of the Third Republic, asks
seriously why we should not revive the hanging gardens of Semiramis, and
sets the example by converting his fifth floor balcony into a market
garden, to the discomfiture of his son, who finds his erstwhile bedroom
converted into a storehouse for tools and less agreeable matter. I may
mention that M. Lockroy did not abandon his project after a mere
fleeting attempt, nor when the necessity for it had disappeared, but
that at the hour I write (1883) he has taken a prize for pears grown on
that same balcony.

The mania spreads, and every one becomes, for the time being, a
market-gardener in chambers. Even M. Pierre Joigneux, the well-known
horticulturist, and equally clever writer,