"Yes, dear and admirable lady, the chamber
is, as you remark, a pleasant one, but then you
say it will not be vacant for four days, and I
want to come in at once."

"Well, but here is another room—would I
mind occupying that till the pleasant one is
empty? It is not quite such a nice chamber,
certainly, but——"

No, it certainly is not. The bed is short.
The room is small and fusty, and half filled up
with a gigantic china stove. But then four
nights—'tis not long. " Very well, I will take
it, and there's an end. I come in to-night."

Fatal, fatal decision. Why did I not vacillate,
as all sensible people should? Why did I make
up my mind in that absurd manner? Oh Indecision!
—dear, wise, prudent, looking-before-you-leap,
much-abused, invaluable quality—why did
I not listen to you then?

Oh Indecision! why this dead set against
thee on every hand? How often hast thou
stood me in good stead. I will surely one
day write an essay on thee, in thy defence, and
prove how many things (besides that marriage
with Amelia Long) thou hast rescued me from,
which would have been pernicious in the
extreme.

And thou wouldst—dear one—have rescued
me from that chamber of horrors if I had but
listened to thee—for thou wert tugging at my
heart and saying "don't" all the time I was
committing myself.

If the man in the lounging-cap and the dressing-
gown, with the smile and the evil countenance,
who received me on my arrival at my
lodgings with my luggage—if he had shown me
over the house in the first instance instead of
employing his wife for the purpose, I should
never have taken the apartment. However, it
was too late now to recede, so I could only
determine to make the best of it and to keep out
of the house as much as possible.

Out of it at once, just depositing my baggage
and looking round with horror. Out of the
fusty room, and away to dinner and the play.

Hang it, though, I forgot: economy is to be
the order of the day. I must have a cheap
dinner, and as to the play, well suppose, just for
a night or two, I was to give that luxury up?
What's this? a dinner for two francs and a
quarter. That's my affair. " Why give more?"
as the advertisements say, when they want us to
purchase South African port, or anything else
equally cheap and (if there is anything of which
it may be said) equally nasty.

How many legs has a fowl, my child?—Two.
—And how many wings?—Two.—Then if I go
into a tavern and ask for some chicken, the
chance of my getting a wing is equal to that of
my being served with a leg?—Yes, sir; the
chances are equal.—Are they?

Where is the individual who ever went into a
tavern, and calling for some chicken, was
provided with a wing? He does not exist, or if he
does, is about as common as a man who would
fail to look into the mirror twelve times per
hour when he is growing a mous——Stop!

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

WE were talking of economy. Of economy,
and the legs of fowls. The two things go well
together.

Economy and Paris do not go well together.
It was economy that led me, as described in the
last chapter but one, to cross the threshold of
the Café Cartilagineux, which is as nasty a
tavern as you will find anywhere. How should
it be otherwise when you get soup; fish, an
entrée, a roast, a sweet, a bottle of wine, and a
dessert, for two francs and a quarter, and with a
choice of two dishes in every one of the
departments which I have mentioned. It was this
possibility of choice, by-the-by, which led to a
piece of politeness on the part of an old French
officer, for which I shall ever be grateful.
Bewildered by a most mysterious name which
was appended to one of the dishes on the carte,
I was questioning the waiter very closely about
it, but being able to get nothing out of him,
except that it was " excellent," I determined to
judge for myself, and was just ordering it to be
brought, when an old officer, decorated with the
Legion of Honour, who sat behind me, and had
evidently overheard my conversation with the
waiter, this old gentleman, touching me on the
shoulder, said, with a polite bow and a smile,
"Eccuse me, sare, you veel not laike it. It is
bluid of peeg."

I shall be ever thankful to the man who saved
me from eating " blood of pig," especially at
the Café Cartilagineux, and I hope, if he meets
with the present number of this periodical, that
he will accept this public testimony of my
gratitude in a kindly spirit.

"The uses of adversity" may be sweet; nay,
they are so, we know it on good authority, but
woe to the man whose adversity compels him to
have a cheap dinner at Paris.

In London a man may have a chop, potatoes,
and a pint of bitter ale, all admirable of their
kind, at a very economical rate—a dinner that
anybody might sit down to. In Paris, if you
seek a corresponding meal, which would be a
"bifteck" surrounded with potatoes, you must
go to a wretched hole to eat it, because at any
place where this dish would be served in an
eatable condition, you would be treated with
contempt if you ordered so small a dinner. It
is a vile arrangement. You have the same
dinner for two francs at the Café Cagmag that
you get for twelve at Véfour's. Only in one case
all the dishes are disgustingly bad, and in the
other inconceivably good.

Except at Byron's Tavern, an English house
at the back of the Opera Comique, where there
is a table d'hôte at three francs a head, you cannot
get a cheap dinner in Paris. That is to say, a
dinner which a man with a palate can eat without
loathing. Let this be distinctly understood.
It is very important.

There are in this world persons without
palates. I write not for them. Let them fill
their stomachs with garbage at the Café
Cartilagineux, and come out triumphant with a
toothpick in their mouths, or let them go to a