"J'ai cinquante ecus,
J'ai cinquante ecus,
J'ai cinquante ecus de rente!"

Having brought this performance to a satisfactory conclusion, the singer
sat down amid great clapping of hands and clattering of glasses, and the
President, with another flourish on the bugle, called upon one Monsieur
Tourterelle. Monsieur Tourterelle was a tall, gaunt, swarthy personage,
who appeared to have cultivated his beard at the expense of his head,
since the former reached nearly to his waist, while the latter was as
bare as a billiard-ball. Preparing himself for the effort with a
wine-glass full of raw cognac, this gentleman leaned back in his chair,
stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, fixed his eyes on
the ceiling, and plunged at once into a doleful ballad about one
Mademoiselle Rosine, and a certain village _aupres de la mer_, which
seemed to be in an indefinite number of verses, and amused no one but
himself. In the midst of this ditty, just as the audience had begun to
testify their impatience by much whispering and shuffling of feet, an
elderly _Chicard_, with a very bald and shiny head, was discovered to
have fallen asleep in the seat next but one to my own; whereupon my
nearest neighbor, a merry-looking young fellow with a profusion of rough
light hair surmounted by a cap of scarlet cloth, forthwith charred a
cork in one of the candles, and decorated the bald head of the sleeper
with a comic countenance and a pair of huge mustachios. An uproarious
burst of laughter was the immediate result, and the singer, interrupted
somewhere about his 18th verse, subsided into offended silence.

"Monsieur Mueller is requested to favor the honorable society with a
song," cried the President, as soon as the tumult had somewhat subsided.

My red-capped neighbor, answering to that name, begged to be excused, on
the score of having pledged his _ut de poitrine_ a week since at the
Mont de Piete, without yet having been able to redeem it. This apology
was received with laughter, hisses, and general incredulity.

"But," he added, "I am willing to relate an adventure that happened to
myself in Rome two winters ago, if my honorable brother _Chicards_ will
be pleased to hear it."

An immense burst of approbation from all but Monsieur Tourterelle and
the bald sleeper, followed this announcement; and so, after a
preliminary _grog au vin_, and another explosive demonstration on the
part of the chairman, Monsieur Muel