never have expected it of him.'

'Yes, papa' (that was what the young dog was wont to call me, though he
was no son of mine--far from it); 'but about "Gil Blas"? Is it _really_
the next best book? And after he had read it--say ten times--would he
not have been rather sorry that he had not chosen--well, Shakespeare,
for instance?'

The picture of Bias with a long white beard, the growth of twenty years,
reading that tattered copy of 'Gil Blas' in his cell, almost affected me
to tears; but I made shift to answer gravely: 'Bias is a professional
critic; and persons of that class are apt to be a little dogmatic and
given to exaggeration. But "Gil Blas" is a great work. As a picture of
the seamy side of human life--of its vices and its weaknesses at
least--it is unrivalled. The archbishop----'

'Oh! I know that archbishop--_well_,' interrupted my young tormentor. 'I
sometimes think, if it hadn't been for that archbishop, we should never
perhaps have heard of "Gil Blas."'

'Tchut, tchut!' said I; 'you talk like a child.'

'But to read it _all through_, papa--three times, ten times, for all
one's life? Poor Mr. Bias!'

'It is a matter of opinion, my dear boy,' I said. 'Bias has this great
advantage over you in literary matters, that he knows what he is talking
about; and if he was quite sure----'

'Oh! but he was not quite sure: he was rather doubtful, he said, about