FRANCIS TRAIN? Where is the DUKE DE MONTEBELLO, or the Count of MONTE
CHRISTO, that they don't hang round you like aggravated wasps, and sting
you into that appreciation of the fitness of things whereby some razor
may be slipped across your wizzen, and Paris follow your corse to the
_Pére la Chaise_ with joy and gladness? Why, in the name of all the
torments--"

I stopped for want of breath, in time to see that the crowd paid no
attention, and that, to say the least of it, I had been making an ass of
myself. Not that there was no wisdom in my words, but these Frenchmen
are the most "dog gorned" insensible people to right up and down, plain,
everyday gospel truth that Providence ever permitted to play checkers
with Destiny. I had no hankering for a closer interview with FLOURENS.
He and I could never had got at a basis peace. There is no harmony in
the method of our mental "jointings." I would have given "stamps" to
have got his head under a quiet village pump, but I wouldn't have
undertaken to reason with him for all the gold of the Credit Mobilier.
There is another creamy idiot, trying his "level best" to smash things
here. Look at him! JULES VALLES! a patriot by name and a Pat-rioter by
nature, with enough hair on his head to stuff a gabion, and not sense
enough beneath it to accommodate a well-informed parrot. These fellows
call FAVRE a "milk-sop," and the trouble of it is that FAYRE
occasionally gives them reason for doing so. Strolling through the
_Passage des Princes_ this morning, I saw TROCHU and accosted him.
"General," I said, probably with some trifling vindictiveness in my
heart, "isn't there a grease vat in Paris sufficiently large to boil
down Monsieur FLOURENS and his friends?" He might have thought that I
was a little overheated, or that some of the _Grand Cafe_ "tangle-foot"
had got into my head; but his looks undeniably indicated that he did not
regard this as an unusually _cool_ proposal. He simply said, "Oh my!" in