d yellow
marble, was stained all over with the coffee, wine, and ink-splashes of
many generations of customers. It looked as old--nay, older--than the
house itself.

The young men who were playing at dominoes looked up and nodded, as
three or four others had done in the outer room when we passed through.

"_Bonjour, l'ami_," said the one who seemed to be winning. "Hast thou
chanced to see anything of Martial, coming along!"

"I observed a nose defiling round the corner of the Rue de Bussy,"
replied Mueller, "and it looked as if Martial might be somewhere in the
far distance, but I didn't wait to see. Are you expecting him?"

"Confound him--yes! We've been waiting more than half an hour."

"If you have invited him to breakfast," said Mueller, "he is sure to
come."

"On the contrary, he has invited us to breakfast."

"Ah, that alters the case," said Mueller, philosophically. "Then he is
sure _not_ to come." "Garcon!"

A bullet-headed, short-jacketed, long-aproned waiter, who looked as if
he had not been to bed since his early youth, answered the summons,

"M'sieur!"

"What have you that you can especially recommend this morning?"

The waiter, with that nasal volubility peculiar to his race, rapidly ran
over the whole vegetable and animal creation.

Mueller listened with polite incredulity.

"Nothing else?" said he, when the other stopped, apparently from want of
breath.

"_Mais oui, M'sieur_!" and, thus stimulated, the waiter, having
"exhausted worlds and then imagined new," launched forth into a second
and still more impossible catalogue.

Mueller turned to me.

"The resources of this establishment, you observe," he said, very
gravely, "are inexhaustible. One might have a Roc's egg a la Sindbad for
the asking."

The waiter looked puzzled, shuffled his slippered feet, and murmured
something about "_oeufs sur le plat_."

"Unfortunately, however," continued Mueller, "we are but men--not
fortresses provisioning for a siege. Antoine, _mon enfant_, we know thee
to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent;
but we will be content with a _vol-au-vent_ of fish, a _bifteck aux
pommes frites_, an _omelette sucree_, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux
with the yellow seal. Now vanish!"

The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished
accordingly.

Meanwhile more students had come in, and more kept coming. Hats and caps
cropped up rapidly wherever there were pegs to hang