He never said anything else; I don't believe
he could; but I have an idea that he had been
an idiot from his youth upwards, and that
this one poll-parrot cry had been taught him,
and that this was all he knew. During the
short-lived Republic the hall was one of the
fiercest of political clubs; and I have no doubt
that my friend the butcher, repudiating the
puerilities of the Cellarius, spoke his mind out
stoutly on the necessity of proclaiming every
master butcher an enemy of mankind, and of
having the professional chopper used on the
heads of the syndics. After the Republic
had fallen through, the hall fell into the
dominion of Terpsichore again; but its choregraphic
prestige was gone; and I have often
seen the most frenzied mazourkas performed
to no better audience than two sergents de
ville, the pompier on duty, a dyspeptic
American, and a solemn Englishman. After this,
there was a species of assault of arms in
the hall, after the fashion of our Saville
House. I have not been told whether the
Saladin feat, or the severisation of the quarter
of mutton, took place; but there was fencing,
and much wrestling, and the exercise of the
savate, and a series of eccentric gymnastics
with gloves, in which paralysis, St. Vitus's
dance, the clog hornpipe, mesmeric passes,
and the attitudes of Mr. Merryman when he
asks you how you are to-morrow, were oddly
mingled, and which was called La Beox
Anglaise, and was believed by the spectators
to be an exact reproduction of an English
pugilistic encounter. I sincerely hope that
our chivalrous neighbours may never become
greater adepts in that brutal and debasing
pastime.

Subsequently I lost sight of the Hall of
Montesquieu for a long time. Hearing even that
the Docks de la Toilette had been established
in the Cour des Fontaines, I concluded that
the hall had been pulled down, or converted
perhaps into a dry dock for coats, perhaps
into a basin for pantaloons.  But I suddenly
heard that it has been doing a great business
in the Beef line, throughout the whole
time of the Exhibition of Industry; that it
had been dining its two and three thousand
a day; and that it was now the Etablissement
du Bouillon BÅ“uf, with succursals in
the Rue Coquillière, the Rue de la Monnaie,
and the Rue Beauregard.

I was off to the Cour des Fontaines
immediately. There was a great photographic
establishment somewhere above the hall, and
effigies of scowling captains of dragoons, high-
cheekboned ladies, and epileptic children, were
hung on the entrance pillars in the usual
puzzling manner; but there was no mistaking
the gastronomic character which the place
had assumed. A species of triumphal altar
had been erected in a niche in front, and
on it were piled huge joints of beef, legs
and shoulders of mutton, geese, turkies,
fowls, sausages, apples, pears of
preternatural size, and real venison, furred,
leathern-nosed and antlered. There was an oyster
woman—a belle écaillière—before the door
(the majority of belle écaillières are sixty
years of age, and take snuff, even as the most
numerous portion of the vivandières in the
army are wrinkled and ill-favoured). There
was a great running in and out of waiters, a
great ingress and egress of diners through
swing doors; the whole place was full
of life and movement, and the promise of
beef.

On entering (it was very like entering the
Crystal Palace, so great was the throng, so
large and lively the vista beyond), a courteous
man gave me, with a bow, a carte of the
viands obtainable, with the day of the month
affixed, and blank spaces left for the quantity
consumed. Then I passed on into the well-
remembered hall; but ah, how changed!

Prettily decorated, brilliantly lighted,
crowded as of yore; but the orchestra and the
throng of dancers were replaced by long lanes
of marble tables, guiltless of tablecloths,
covered with edibles, and at which perhaps four
hundred persons were busily dining. In the
centre were two immense erections, monuments
covered with enamelled plates, and
surmounted with pretty parterres of flowers.
There were some encaustic portraits of waiters
flying about with smoking dishes painted on
the enamelled plates, giving the erections the
appearance of vast mausoleums, erected to
the memory of departed garçons and cooks
who had fallen before too fierce fires, and too
hungry customers. But they were not
cenotaphs, I discovered afterwards, but merely
the cooking apparatus of the Bouillon Boeuf;
for round the base were ledges with the
customary furnace holes and stewpans; and
round this again, at a distance of a few feet,
an oval counter piled with plates, where the
waiters gave their orders and received their
dishes. In the space between pullulated
numerous cooks, male and female—the latter
mostly very pretty—ah! roguish Bouillon
BÅ“uf!—all as busy as bees stirring sauce-
pans, dishing up vegetables, ladling out soup,
and apportioning modicums of stew. And
there was a loud cry afloat of "Versez;" for
many of the four hundred were taking their
coffee after dinner, and waiters scudded,
skated rather than walked, from table to
table, and from huge coffee-pots frothed up
the smoking substitute for mocha. Pour
on and be merry; rattle knives and forks;
chatter grisettes; hoarsely order biftek pour
deux, oh waiter; gesticulate, discourse
vehemently, oh moustached men; querulously
demand more soup and drum impatiently on
your plates with spoons, oh little children in
bibs, brought to dine at the Bouillon BÅ“uf
by your fond parents; ring out, ye echoes,
till the glazed roof vibrates; for here is life,
here health, cheerfulness, enjoyment, and be
hanged to the Silent Tomb!

As there was rather too much life and
merriment below, however, for a man who