tudied Gall's system,
and I am sure she has the bump of Judas."

"Then you have seen a case before?" said Vautrin.

"Who has not?" answered Bianchon. "Upon my word, that ghastly old maid
looks just like one of the long worms that will gnaw a beam through,
give them time enough."

"That is the way, young man," returned he of the forty years and the
dyed whiskers:

"The rose has lived the life of a rose--
A morning's space."

"Aha! here is a magnificent _soupe-au-rama_," cried Poiret as Christophe
came in bearing the soup with cautious heed.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Mme. Vauquer; "it is _soupe aux choux_."

All the young men roared with laughter.

"Had you there, Poiret!"

"Poir-r-r-rette! she had you there!"

"Score two points to Mamma Vauquer," said Vautrin.

"Did any of you notice the fog this morning?" asked the official.

"It was a frantic fog," said Bianchon, "a fog unparalleled, doleful,
melancholy, sea-green, asthmatical--a Goriot of a fog!"

"A Goriorama," said the art student, "because you couldn't see a thing
in it."

"Hey! Milord Gaoriotte, they air talking about yoo-o-ou!"

Father Goriot, seated at the lower end of the table, close to the door
through which the servant entered, raised his face; he had smelt at a
scrap of bread that lay under his table napkin, an old trick acquired in
his commercial capacity, that still showed itself at times.

"Well," Madame Vauquer cried in sharp tones, that rang above the rattle
of spoons and plates and the sound of other voices, "and is there
anything the matter with the bread?"

"Nothing whatever, madame," he answered; "on the contrary, it is made of
the best quality of corn; flour from Etampes."

"How could you tell?" asked Eugene.

"By the color, by the flavor."

"You knew the flavor by the smell, I suppose," said Mme. Vauquer. "You
have grown so economical, you will find out how to live on the smell of
cooking at last."

"Take out a patent for it, then," cried the Museum official; "you would
make a handsome fortune."

"Never mind him," said the artist; "he does that sort of thing to delude
us into thinking that he was a vermicelli maker."

"Your nose is a corn-sampler, it appears?" inquired the official.

"Corn _what_?" asked Bianchon.

"Corn-el."

"Corn-et."

"Corn-elian."

"Corn-ice."

"Corn-ucopia."

"Corn-crake."

"Corn-cockle."

"Corn-orama."

The eight responses came like a rolling fire from every part of