lowing locks adorned with velvet caps
and birds' wings, their loins girded with short swords. And yet it was
not carnival time. No one seemed to take particular notice of them; the
Parisians by that time had probably got used to their vagaries. Those
competent in such matters have since told me that the "get-up" was
inspired by "La Gaule Poetique" of M. de Marchangy, the novels of M.
d'Arlincourt, and the kindred stilted literature that characterized the
beginning of the Restoration. Both these gentlemen, from their very
hatred of the Greeks and Romans of the first Empire, created heroes of
fiction still more ridiculous than the latter, just as Metternich,
through his weariness of the word "fraternity," said that if he had a
brother he would call him "cousin." A few years later, the first
translation of Byron's works produced its effect; and then came
Defauconpret, with his very creditable French versions of Walter Scott.
The influence of Paul Delaroche and his co-champions of the cause of
romanticism, the revolution of July, the dramas of Alexandre Dumas and
Victor Hugo, all added their quota to the prevailing confusion in the
matter of style and period, and early in the forties there were at the
"Childebert" several camps, fraternizing in everything save in their
dress and speech, which were the visible and audible manifestation of
their individual predilection for certain periods of history. For
instance, it was no uncommon thing to hear the son of a concierge, whose
real or fancied vocation had made him embrace the artistic profession,
swear by "the faith of his ancestors," while the impoverished scion of a
noble house replied by calling him "a bloated reminiscence of a feudal
and superstitious age."

At the _conversaziones_ which I mentioned just now, the guests of the
inmates of "La Childebert" not only managed to out-Herod Herod in
diction and attire, but, to heighten illusion still further, adopted as
far as possible the mode of conveyance supposed to have been employed by
their prototypes. The classicists, and those still addicted to the
illustration of Greek and Roman mythology, though nominally in the
minority at the "Childebert" itself, were, as a rule, most successful in
those attempts. The ass that had borne Silenus, the steeds that had
drawn the chariot of the triumphant Roman warrior, the she-goat that was
supposed to have suckled Jupiter, were as familiar to the inhabitants of
the Rue Childebert as the