brimmed hat in the Quartier; he was a dab
at billiards"; a neat hand at smoking clay
pipes to a jetty black; an unrivalled singer
of students' songs and chorusses; and an
adept at the difficult and ingenious art de
tirer la carotte, or science of extracting (under
pretexts of book-purchasing, sickness, or other
extraneous expenses) more than the stipulated
monthly allowance from the parents and
guardians of the student. But when all his
examinations had been passed, and he was
received Doctor of Medicine, when he had
sold his cornet-à-piston, and broken his
blackened tobacco-pipe, shaved off his beard,
and, finally, buried the beer-imbibing dancing
student in a decorous coffin of black broad-cloth,
with white wristbands and shirt front;
when he had taken to himself a wife, and so
become a respectable man with a definite
social position, he found that there were
yet several items wanting to complete his
sum of happiness: namely, patients. He
certainly had an opportunity of studying
infantile maladies in his yearly increasing
family; but the Quartier was an obstinately
healthy one, or else he was not sufficiently
known in it, for few or none came to invoke
his healing knowledge. Our poor Doctor
was almost in despair, and had begun to
think of emigrating to Nouka-hiva, or turning
travelling physician, in a red coat, a cocked
hat, and top-boots, with a horse and gig, and
a black servant, after the manner of the
famous Doctor Dulcamara when he was one
evening summoned to attend M. de Flamm,
who was suffering from a slight indigestion,
brought on by eating too many truffles,
washed down by too much Sauterne. He so
effectually relieved that capitalist, as to
awaken within him something like a sense of
gratitude, patronising, of course, as from a
millionnaire to a poor devil of a patientless
physician, but which was productive of good
fruits. M. de Flamm took Doctor Jaconnet
in hand; he "formed" him, as he called it.
After debating whether his protégé should
resort to Homœopathy or Animal magnetism,
he finally decided upon the Puff-Specific mode
of obtaining popularity; and one fine morning
all the walls and posts in Paris were
stencilled, and all the advertising columns of the
newspapers inundated with high-flown
announcements of the marvellous properties of
the "Water of long life" of the Doctor en
médécine Jaconnet. Since that period I have
observed a sensible improvement in the dress
and general appearance of the family; whether
they drink the Eau de longue vie themselves,
or whether they profit by the sale thereof—(in
family bottles, price twelve francs: none being
genuine unless they bear the signature of the
inventor, Paracelse Caraguel)—they are
certainly much better for the water cure.
Jaconnet's colleagues call him a quack; but,
bless you, they have all their little specifics.
Doctor Galen has an infallible paste for
catarrh; Doctor Hippocrates has a cure for
the rheumatism; and Doctor Esculapius one
for corns and bunnions. Medical quackery,
when unauthorised by a diploma, is so rigidly
pursued, and so severely punished in France,
that it takes refuge, occasionally, in the ranks
of the profession itself.

The Doctor's neighbour on the second floor
is one M. Bonfons, a retired perfumer, wearing
the ribbon of the Legion of Honour—why, I
am unable to tell, (the Doctor has got his scrap
of red ribbon since the water of long life)—an
old gentleman of intensely regular habits, a
mild and placid demeanour, and, I should say,
of some fifty years of age. He goes out every
morning at the same hour, breakfasts at the
same café off café au lait and a flûte, or long
soft loaf; takes a walk in the Tuileries gardens,
or reads the papers in a reading room if it
rains; breakfasts à la fourchette at another
café; takes another walk on the Boulevards;
dines at the same traiteur's, and, generally,
off the same dishes; goes to another café, where
he has strong coffee without milk and petit
verre, the evening papers, two games at dominoes,
one at piquet, and one glass of absinthe.
Winter und summer he goes to bed at ten
o'clock. He seems to have no relations,—no
friends, save coffee-shop acquaintance, and he
appears to be perfectly happy. I dare say
he is.

The third floor of the Hotel Coquelet is
likewise divided into two tenements, in each
of which lives a different tenant. Both are
single: one an old spinster, the other an old
bachelor. Mademoiselle de Keraguel lives
on the right hand side of the staircase. She
is seventy years of age, and has been very
beautiful once, and very unhappy. Her brother
was a marquis of the old régime, and she comes
from Brittany; but she is the last Keraguel
now. She has outlived friends, relatives,
fortune, happiness, everything but religion. So
she is what the Parisians call a dévote. She
goes to matins, complins, high mass, and
vespers. She has an occasional assemblage of
old friends in her plain salon; two or three
old priests, an old countess whose children
were weaned from her by the guillotine, and
a weasened old chevalier with the cross of
Saint Louis. These she regales with tea and
snuff. They talk politics of the year 1780,
and of the year 1816 to 1850 inclusive. All
intervening years are to them a blank. The
reigning king is at Frohsdorf, as he was at
Holyrood and at Goritz. With them Napoleon
is always M. de Buonaparte; Louis Philippe,
the Duke of Orleans. They never mention
the name of Robespierre, they speak of him
as " lui"

Mademoiselle de Keraguel has for neighbour
an old gentleman with a bald and polished
head, who would be one of the most amiable
of mankind, were he not so enthusiastic a
naturalist. He is as modest as a girl of fifteen,
yet I elicited from him one day an admission
that he was a member of half-a-dozen European
academies, and had written half-a-score