each other there,
from father to son.

In the time of Mathurin Regnier, this cabaret was called the
Pot-aux-Roses, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its
sign-board, a post (poteau) painted rose-color. In the last century, the
worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised by the
stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine-shop at the
very table where Regnier had drunk his fill, had painted, by way of
gratitude, a bunch of Corinth grapes on the pink post. The keeper of the
cabaret, in his joy, had changed his device and had caused to be placed
in gilt letters beneath the bunch these words: "At the Bunch of Corinth
Grapes" ("Au Raisin de Corinthe"). Hence the name of Corinthe. Nothing
is more natural to drunken men than ellipses. The ellipsis is the
zig-zag of the phrase. Corinthe gradually dethroned the Pot-aux-Roses.
The last proprietor of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, no longer
acquainted even with the tradition, had the post painted blue.

A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first
floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing
the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad
daylight,--this was the style of this cabaret. A staircase with a
trap-door in the lower room led to the cellar. On the second floor were
the lodgings of the Hucheloup family. They were reached by a staircase
which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance
only a private door in the large room on the first floor. Under the
roof, in two mansard attics, were the nests for the servants. The
kitchen shared the ground-floor with the tap-room.

Father Hucheloup had, possibly, been born a chemist, but the fact is
that he was a cook; people did not confine themselves to drinking alone
in his wine-shop, they also ate there. Hucheloup had invented a capital
thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house, stuffed carps,
which he called carpes au gras. These were eaten by the light of a
tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI., on tables to which
were nailed waxed cloths in lieu of table-cloths. People came thither
from a distance. Hucheloup, one fine morning, had seen fit to notify
passers-by of this "specialty"; he had dipped a brush in a pot of black
paint, and as he was an orthographer on his own account, as well as
a cook after his own fashion, he had improvised on his wall this
remarkable inscr