You learn more by talk in a cafe, or at a theatre, in one half
hour, than you would learn in ten years in the provinces. Here, in
truth, wherever you go, there is always something to see,
something to learn, some comparison to make. Extreme cheapness and
excessive dearness--there is Paris for you; there is honeycomb
here for every bee, every nature finds its own nourishment. So,
though life is hard for me just now, I repent of nothing. On the
contrary, a fair future spreads out before me, and my heart
rejoices though it is saddened for the moment. Good-bye my dear
sister. Do not expect letters from me regularly; it is one of the
peculiarities of Paris that one really does not know how the time
goes. Life is so alarmingly rapid. I kiss the mother and you and
David more tenderly than ever.

"LUCIEN."


The name of Flicoteaux is engraved on many memories. Few indeed were
the students who lived in the Latin Quarter during the last twelve
years of the Restoration and did not frequent that temple sacred to
hunger and impecuniosity. There a dinner of three courses, with a
quarter bottle of wine or a bottle of beer, could be had for eighteen
sous; or for twenty-two sous the quarter bottle becomes a bottle.
Flicoteaux, that friend of youth, would beyond a doubt have amassed a
colossal fortune but for a line on his bill of fare, a line which
rival establishments are wont to print in capital letters, thus--BREAD
AT DISCRETION, which, being interpreted, should read "indiscretion."

Flicoteaux has been nursing-father to many an illustrious name.
Verily, the heart of more than one great man ought to wax warm with