with a huge two-pronged iron fork. This fork he plunges in once;--he may
get a calf's foot, or a potato, or a sheep's head, or a carrot, or a
cabbage, or nothing, as fate and the fork direct. All men are gamblers
in some way or another, and _Le hasard_ is a game of gastronomic chance.
But from the ridiculous to the sublime, it is but a step--and while
talking of _Le hasard_ behold, we have arrived at the _Maison Dorée_."



CHAPTER XIX.

A DINNER AT THE MAISON DORÉE AND AN EVENING PARTY IN THE QUARTIER LATIN.

The most genial of companions was our new acquaintance, Franz Müller,
the art-student. Light-hearted, buoyant, unassuming, he gave his animal
spirits full play, and was the life of our little dinner. He had more
natural gayety than generally belongs to the German character, and his
good-temper was inexhaustible. He enjoyed everything; he made the best
of everything; he saw food for laughter in everything. He was always
amused, and therefore was always amusing. Above all, there was a
spontaneity in his mirth which acted upon others as a perpetual
stimulant. He was in short, what the French call a _bon garçon_, and the
English a capital fellow; easy without assurance, comic without
vulgarity, and, as Sydney Smith wittily hath it--"a great number of
other things without a great number of other things."

Upon Dalrymple, who had been all day silent, abstracted, and unlike his
usual self, this joyous influence acted like a tonic. As entertainer, he
was bound to exert himself, and the exertion did him good. He threw off
his melancholy; and with the help, possibly, of somewhat more than his