ladle, looking much larger than it really is, the contents of the bowl
before her. These contents are an enormous quantity of thick brown
liquid, in the midst of which swim numerous islands of vegetable matter
and a few pieces of meat. Meanwhile, a damsel, hideously ugly--but whose
ugliness is in part concealed by a neat, trim cap--makes the tour of the
room with a box of tickets, grown black by use, and numbered from one to
whatever number may be that of the company. Each of them gives four sous
to this Hebe of the place, accompanying the action with an amorous look,
which is both the habit and the duty of every Frenchman when he has
anything to do with the opposite sex, and which is not always a matter
of course, for Marie has her admirers, and has been the cause of more
than one _rixe_ in the Rue des Anglais. The tickets distributed, up
rises number one--with a joke got ready for the occasion, and a look of
earnest anxiety, as if he were going to throw for a kingdom--takes the
ladle, plunges it into the bowl, and transfers whatever it brings up to
his basin. It is contrary to the rules for any man to hesitate when he
has once made his plunge, though he has a perfect right to take his time
in a previous survey of the _ocean_--a privilege of which he always
avails himself. If he brings up one of the pieces of meat, the glisten
of his eye and the applauding murmur which goes round the assembly give
him a momentary exultation, which it is difficult to conceive by those
who have not witnessed it. In this the spirit of successful gambling is,
beyond all doubt, the uppermost feeling; it mixes itself up with
everything done by that class of society, and is the main reason of the
popularity of these places with their _habitues_; for when the customers
have once acquired the habit, they rarely go anywhere else."

[Illustration: Omnibus.]