Evidently it was to be a banquet. Piled up in the centre of the table
was a large dish of crayfish, and at each plate--there were five--were
groups of large and small glasses.

Maurice came in almost immediately, accompanied by his other guests,
three young men dressed in the latest fashion, whom Amedee did not at
first recognize as his former comrades, who once wore wrinkled stockings
and seedy coats, and wore out with him the seats of their trousers on the
benches of the Lycee Henri IV.

After the greetings, "What! is it you?" "Do you remember me?" and a
shaking of hands, they all seated themselves around the table.

What! is that little dumpy fellow with the turned-up nose, straight as an
arrow and with such a satisfied air, Gorju, who wanted to be an actor?
He is one now, or nearly so, since he studies with Regnier at the
Conservatoire. A make-believe actor, he puts on airs, and in the three
minutes that he has been in the room he has looked at his retrousse nose
and his coarse face, made to be seen from a distance, ten times in the
mirror. His first care is to inform Amedee that he has renounced his
name Gorju, which was an impossible one for the theatre, and has taken
that of Jocquelet. Then, without losing a moment, he refers to his
"talents," "charms," and "physique."

Who is this handsome fellow with such neat side-whiskers, whose finely
cut features suggest an intaglio head, and who has just placed a lawyer's
heavy portfolio upon the sofa? It is Arthur Papillon, the distinguished
Latin scholar who wished to organize a debating society at the Lycee,
and to divide the rhetoric class into groups and sub-groups like a