?" said the King.

"Sire, a post-office."

"What is your name?"

"L'Aigle."

The King frowned, glanced at the signature of the petition and beheld
the name written thus: LESGLE. This non-Bonoparte orthography touched
the King and he began to smile. "Sire," resumed the man with the
petition, "I had for ancestor a keeper of the hounds surnamed
Lesgueules. This surname furnished my name. I am called Lesgueules, by
contraction Lesgle, and by corruption l'Aigle." This caused the King
to smile broadly. Later on he gave the man the posting office of Meaux,
either intentionally or accidentally.

The bald member of the group was the son of this Lesgle, or Legle, and
he signed himself, Legle [de Meaux]. As an abbreviation, his companions
called him Bossuet.

Bossuet was a gay but unlucky fellow. His specialty was not to succeed
in anything. As an offset, he laughed at everything. At five and twenty
he was bald. His father had ended by owning a house and a field; but
he, the son, had made haste to lose that house and field in a bad
speculation. He had nothing left. He possessed knowledge and wit, but
all he did miscarried. Everything failed him and everybody deceived him;
what he was building tumbled down on top of him. If he were splitting
wood, he cut off a finger. If he had a mistress, he speedily discovered
that he had a friend also. Some misfortune happened to him every moment,
hence his joviality. He said: "I live under falling tiles." He was
not easily astonished, because, for him, an accident was what he had
foreseen, he took his bad luck serenely, and smiled at the teasing of
fate, like a person who is listening to pleasantries. He was poor, but
his fund of good humor was inexhaustible. He soon reached his last sou,
never his last burst of laughter. When adversity entered his doors, he
saluted this old acquaintance cordially, he tapped all catastrophes on
the stomach; he was familiar with fatality to the point of calling it by
its nickname: "Good day, Guignon," he said to it.

These persecutions of fate had rendered him inventive. He was full of
resources. He had no money, but he found means, when it seemed good to
him, to indulge in "unbridled extravagance." One night, he went so far
as to eat a "hundred francs" in a supper with a wench, which inspired
him to make this memorable remark in the midst of the orgy: "Pull off my
boots, you five-louis jade."

Bossuet was slowly directing his steps towards the profess