Which brings me back to the vital question,
the tenacity of life with which Societies are
gifted. Our society had to pass through a
crisis. It did not succumb, but it fell into a
trance; animation was suspended by a
temporary lethargy; the functions of the Cercle
ceased for a while; there was an interregnum,
a hiatus maximè deflendus, a closing of doors;
but no deposition, death, decease, or dissolution.
Ev'n in our ashes lived their wonted fires.
But we weren't yet ashes. Ourselves were all
alive and well, and our furniture hadn't to go
to the broker's. Our billiard-table and cues,
our rules for the same, framed and varnished,
our rush-bottomed chairs, our inkstand, our
mirror, and our beloved barometer, merely fell
into sudden repose, like the Sleeping Beauty
and her suite, in the enchanted wood.

What spell brought about this state of things
I cannot, sir, exactly say. I have stated, sir,
that we have furniture, amongst which I forgot
to mention our hat-pegs and our racks for holding
members' pipes when not in use (some of
us preferring clay to cigars); but we don't
choose, like many of the London clubs, to be
burdened with a building and an establishment
of servants of our own. I admit that we can't
afford it. We were, therefore, located over a
café (whole of the first floor), with a splendid
look-out on the market-place. Our attendants
were the café-keeper's two fair daughters, with
occasional assistance from papa. Everything
went on smoothly. We quaffed our generous
beer with as keen a relish as if we had been
waited on by giants in livery; and I, for one,
would have been content to live on so for ever
and a day. But, sundry members retiring,
through incapacity to appreciate the advantages
they enjoyed, we became small by degrees and
beautifully less— less in numbers and less in
newspapers— until we had to consider (as our
landlord wouldn't lower our rent) whether we
should go on with our journals without our
rooms, or go on with our rooms without our
journals. Like the pliant reed, we bowed our
head before the storm; and, like the reed, we
raise our head again. We are once more afloat,
set a-going, fresh started.

Hope reigns eternal in the human (society's)
breast. Never say die. The world is wide.
There are as good fish in the sea as ever came
put of it. It is a long lane which has no turning.
I group these truths together (which are
not so incongruous as they sound), because they
revived and resuscitated our dormant existence.
After a period of patient inaction, which lasted
more than an entire revolution of the planet we
inhabit round the sun, we found, on the other
side of the market-place— La Grande Place we
call it— another café-keeper, with another first
floor at our disposal. A few devoted members
threw themselves into the breach, and
reconstructed our recumbent edifice at their own
risk and responsibility. This, sir, was true
patriotism, approaching that of Curtius. The
Literary Cercle of Petitbourg (with new decorations,
paper-hangings, and stove), as fresh as
a phoenix, opened its wings to shelter its faithful
and attached alumni. Not long ago, a circular,
signed " Dufour, President," invited me, in my
quality of member, to assist at its reopening
one auspicious evening, at five of the clock
precisely, Petitbourg time. Entrance (private, as
a matter of course), Rue du Boulevard.

I went, sir. My eyes were delighted and
dazzled. There were my old familiar friends;
the hexagonal-framed clock, at whose round
face I had so often gazed; the dial barometer I
had so assiduously caressed and patted; the
glass which had so repeatedly (and favourably)
reflected my manly features; the billiard-table
(not yet levelled), whose ball-clicking had erst
enlivened my ears. On the card-table, freshened
up with verdant cloth, lay the treaty, the compact
of our new existence, awaiting adhesion
and signature. I looked around, sir, for either
an imperial eagle's quill, or a plume from the
wing of the Gallic cock. Finding neither, I
performed the decisive act through the
instrumentality of a pen of steel. I counted the
signatures. We were twenty, sir.

A few modifications in our state and style are
the necessary consequences of the change.
Instead of two rooms— a cabinet for reading and
a salle for smoking, cards, and billiards— we
have only one; but then, sir, it is a very long
one. At the end next the windows (there are
three windows, sir), you may read your paper, and
fancy yourself in a separate apartment. At the
other end, where stands the billiard-table, you
may talk and smoke and easily forget the
presence of readers, who do not give you the least
interruption. Between those two regions, of
which the stove marks the exact frontier, is a
border-land several feet in breadth, where a
cluster of hospitable tables and chairs invites
friendly greetings and meetings from either
antipodes.

Perhaps the most remarkable of our new
institutions is our staircase; which is as much
the reverse of Avernus, with its " easy descent,"
as our Elysian locality is unlike that dismal
retreat. Our ascent is easy enough to accomplish;
the difficulty— partly owing to the charm
of the place itself, partly owing to the peculiar
construction of the stairs— lies in getting down
again. As the mysteries of old could only be
approached by slow degrees and through
tortuous entrances, so our staircase itself is not
reached at once and abruptly. Two steps,
leading from the street-- each so high that, to
mount it, you have to raise your knee almost
to your chin, while in going down in the
dark, you fancy you have stepped by mistake
into a well— two steps place you on a level with
a glass door. The door admits you to a passage
slightly sloping upward. The passage
traversed, you mount four stone steps, such as
might belong to an ancient temple. Another
sloping passage, and then three more stone steps,
which give you the idea of going to prison,
conduct you at last to the foot of our staircase,
which is closed by a door not of glass, but of
perfectly opaque and solid wood. It is the