use their own expression; and as for Desroches, he was prepared to
fall in with his mother's views in case he could do no better for
himself. Wherefore, he kept up his acquaintance with the druggists in
the Rue du Cherche-Midi.

"To put another kind of happiness before you, you should have a
description of these shopkeepers, male and female. They rejoiced in
the possession of a handsome ground floor and a strip of garden; for
amusement, they watched a little squirt of water, no bigger than a
cornstalk, perpetually rising and falling upon a small round freestone
slab in the middle of a basin some six feet across; they would rise
early of a morning to see if the plants in the garden had grown in the
night; they had nothing to do, they were restless, they dressed for
the sake of dressing, bored themselves at the theatre, and were for
ever going to and fro between Paris and Luzarches, where they had a
country house. I have dined there.

"Once they tried to quiz me, Blondet. I told them a long-winded story
that lasted from nine o'clock till midnight, one tale inside another.
I had just brought my twenty-ninth personage upon the scene (the
newspapers have plagiarized with their 'continued in our next'), when
old Matifat, who as host still held out, snored like the rest, after
blinking for five minutes. Next day they all complimented me upon the
ending of my tale!

"These tradespeople's society consisted of M. and Mme. Cochin,
Mme. Desroches, and a young Popinot, still in the drug business,
who used to bring them news of the Rue des Lombards. (You know him,
Finot.) Mme. Matifat loved the arts; she bought lithographs,
chromo-lithographs, and colored prints,--all the cheapest things she