'The moral this evening, signori, I shall carry home in my stomach.'

As he was going out of the restaurant, one of the artists asked him why
he left two rolls of bread on the table; saying they were paid for, and
belonged to him.

'I left them,' said he, 'out of regard for the correct usages of
society; but, having shown this, I return to pocket them.'

This he did at once, and Caper stood astonished at the seedy-beggar's
phraseology.

In addition to these characters, wandering musicians find their way into
the café, jugglers, peddlers of Roman mosaics and jewelry, plaster-casts
and sponges, perfumery and paint-brushes. Or a peripatetic shoemaker,
with one pair of shoes, which he recklessly offers for sale to giant or
dwarf. One morning he found a purchaser--a French artist--who put them
on, and threw away his old shoes. Fatal mistake. Two hours afterward,
the buyer was back in the Greco, with both big toes sticking out of the
ends of his new shoes, looking for that _cochon_ of a shoemaker.

To those who read men like books, the Greco offers a valuable
circulating library. The advantage, too, of these artistical works is,
that one needs not be a Mezzofanti to read the Russian, Spanish, German,
French, Italian, English, and other faces that pass before one
panoramically. There sits a relation of a hospodar, drinking Russian
tea; he pours into a large cup a small glass of brandy, throws in a
slice of lemon, fills up with hot tea. Do you think of the miles he has
traveled, in a _telega_, over snow-covered steppes, and the smoking
_samovar_ of tea that awaited him, his journey for the day ended? Had he