ited boys, with more enthusiasm than brains, and a
flow of words wholly out of proportion to the bulk of their ideas. As I
came to know him more intimately, I used sometimes to go there with
Mueller, after our cheap dinner in the Quartier and our evening stroll
along the Boulevards or the Champs Elysees; and I am bound to admit that
I never, before or since, heard quite so much nonsense of the
declamatory sort as on those memorable occasions. I did not think it
nonsense then, however. I admired it with all my heart; applauded the
nursery eloquence of these sucking Mirabeaus and Camille Desmoulins as
frantically as their own vanity could desire; and was even secretly
chagrined that my own French was not yet fluent enough to enable me to
take part in their discussions.

In the meanwhile, my debts were paid; and, having dropped out of society
when I fell out of love with Madame de Marignan, I no longer overspent
my allowance. I bought no more bouquets, paid for no more opera-stalls,
and hired no more prancing steeds at seven francs the hour. I bade adieu
to picture-galleries, flower-shows, morning concerts, dress boots, white
kid gloves, elaborate shirt-fronts, and all the vanities of the
fashionable world. In a word, I renounced the Faubourg St. Germain for
the Quartier Latin, and applied myself to such work and such pleasures
as pertained to the locality. If, after a long day at Dr. Cheron's, or
the Hotel Dieu, or the Ecole de Medecine, I did waste a few hours now
and then, I, at least, wasted them cheaply. Cheaply, but oh, so
pleasantly! Ah me! those nights at the debating club, those evenings at
the Chicards, those student's balls at the Chaumiere, those third-class
trips to Versailles and Fontainebleau, those one-franc pit seats at the
Gaiete and the Palais Royal, those little suppers at Pompon's and
Flicoteau's--how delightful they were! How joyous! How free from care!
And even when we made up a party and treated the ladies (for to treat
the ladies is _de rigueur_ in the code of Quartier Latin etiquette), how
little it still cost, and what a world of merriment we had for
the money!

It was well for me, too, and a source of much inward satisfaction, that
my love-affair with Mademoiselle Josephine had faded and died a natural
death. We never made up that quarrel of the Opera Comique, and I had not
desired that we should make it up. On the contrary, I was exceedingly
glad of the opportunity of withdrawing my attentions