gloves, who wish to become house-owners, have cooked their favorite
dishes for him, and have practised only half a dozen winters, two or
three times a week upon him, we shall know more as to his digestion.
Still that dinner was enjoyable. Beginning with the suspicious salmon,
the statesman with the brush-broom head, the one who had overthrown
Louis-Philippe without suspecting it, started to explain how, if they had
listened to his advice, this constitutional king's dynasty would yet be
upon the throne; and at the moment when the wretched butler poured out
his most poisonous wine, the old lady who looked like a dromedary with
rings in its ears, made Amedee--her unfortunate neighbor--undergo a new
oral examination upon the poets of the nineteenth century, and asked him
what he thought of Lamartine's clamorous debts, and Victor Hugo's foolish
pride, and Alfred de Musset's intemperate habits.

The worthy Amedee is launched! He will go and pay visits of indigestion;
appear one day at Madame such a one's, and at the houses of several other
"Madames." At first he will stay there a half-hour, the simpleton!
until he sees that the cunning ones only come in and go out exactly as
one does in a booth at a fair. He will see pass before him--but this
time in corsages of velvet or satin-all the necks and shoulders of his
acquaintances, those that he turned away from with disgust and those that
made him blush. Each Madame this one, entering Madame that one's house,
will seat herself upon the edge of a chair, and will always say the same
inevitable thing, the only thing that can be or should be said that day;
for example, "So the poor General is dead!" or "Have you heard the new
piece at the Francais? It is not very strong, but it is well played!"
"This will be delicious;" and Amedee will admire, above all things,
Madame this one's play of countenance, when Madame G------ tells her that
Madame B-------'s daughter is to marry Madame C-----'s nephew. While she
hardly knows these people, she will manifest as lively a joy as if they