is teeth with buffooneries, his hair
with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping eye laughed incessantly.
He was dilapidated but still in flower. His youth, which was packing
up for departure long before its time, beat a retreat in good order,
bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything but fire. He had had a
piece rejected at the Vaudeville. He made a few verses now and then. In
addition to this he doubted everything to the last degree, which is a
vast force in the eyes of the weak. Being thus ironical and bald, he
was the leader. Iron is an English word. Is it possible that irony is
derived from it?

One day Tholomyes took the three others aside, with the gesture of an
oracle, and said to them:--

"Fantine, Dahlia, Zephine, and Favourite have been teasing us for nearly
a year to give them a surprise. We have promised them solemnly that we
would. They are forever talking about it to us, to me in particular,
just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius, 'Faccia
gialluta, fa o miracolo, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,' so our
beauties say to me incessantly, 'Tholomyes, when will you bring forth
your surprise?' At the same time our parents keep writing to us.
Pressure on both sides. The moment has arrived, it seems to me; let us
discuss the question."

Thereupon, Tholomyes lowered his voice and articulated something so
mirthful, that a vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon the four
mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, "That is an idea."

A smoky tap-room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder of
their confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.

The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took
place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four
young girls.

CHAPTER III--FOUR AND FOUR

It is hard nowadays to picture to one's self what a pleasure-trip of
students and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago.
The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of what
may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the last
half-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car;
where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak
of Fecamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The Paris
of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.

The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country
follies possible at that time. The vacatio