e were to be imprisoned for life with
only one book to read he would choose the Bible or "Gil Blas."'

'It is very gratifying to me,' said I, wishing to evade my young friend,
and also because I had no love for Bias, 'that he should have selected
the Bible, even as an alternative; and all the more so, since I should
never have expected it of him.'

'Yes, papa' (that was what the young dog was wont to call me, though he
was no son of mine--far from it); 'but about "Gil Blas"? Is it _really_
the next best book? And after he had read it--say ten times--would he
not have been rather sorry that he had not chosen--well, Shakespeare,
for instance?'

The picture of Bias with a long white beard, the growth of twenty years,
reading that tattered copy of 'Gil Blas' in his cell, almost affected me
to tears; but I made shift to answer gravely: 'Bias is a professional
critic; and persons of that class are apt to be a little dogmatic and
given to exaggeration. But "Gil Blas" is a great work. As a picture of
the seamy side of human life--of its vices and its weaknesses at
least--it is unrivalled. The archbishop----'

'Oh! I know that archbishop--_well_,' interrupted my young tormentor. 'I
sometimes think, if it hadn't been for that archbishop, we should never
perhaps have heard of "Gil Blas."'

'Tchut, tchut!' said I; 'you talk like a child.'

'But to read it _all through_, papa--three times, ten times, for all
one's life? Poor Mr. Bias!'

'It is a matter of opinion, my dear boy,' I said. 'Bias has this great
advantage over you in literary matters, that he knows what he is talking
about; and if he was quite sure----'

'Oh! but he was not quite sure: he was rather doubtful, he said, about
one of the books.'

'Not the Bible, I do hope?' said I fervently.

'No, about the other. He was not quite sure but that, instead of "Gil
Blas," he ought to have selected "Don Quixote." Now really that seems to
me worse than "Gil Blas."

'You mean less excellent,' I rejoined; 'you are too young to appreciate
the full signification of "Don Quixote."'

The scoundrel murmured, 'Do you mean to tell me people read it when they
are old?' But I pretended not to hear him. 'We do not all of us,' I went
on, 'know what is good for us. Sancho Panza's physician----'

'Oh! I know that physician--_well_, papa. I sometimes think, if it had
not been for that physician, perhaps----'

'Hush!' I exclaimed authoritatively; 'let us have no flippancy, I beg.'