of youth, would beyond a doubt have amassed a
colossal fortune but for a line on his bill of fare, a line which
rival establishments are wont to print in capital letters, thus--BREAD
AT DISCRETION, which, being interpreted, should read "indiscretion."

Flicoteaux has been nursing-father to many an illustrious name.
Verily, the heart of more than one great man ought to wax warm with
innumerable recollections of inexpressible enjoyment at the sight of
the small, square window panes that look upon the Place de la
Sorbonne, and the Rue Neuve-de-Richelieu. Flicoteaux II. and
Flicoteaux III. respected the old exterior, maintaining the dingy hue
and general air of a respectable, old-established house, showing
thereby the depth of their contempt for the charlatanism of the
shop-front, the kind of advertisement which feasts the eyes at the
expense of the stomach, to which your modern restaurant almost always
has recourse. Here you beheld no piles of straw-stuffed game never
destined to make the acquaintance of the spit, no fantastical fish to
justify the mountebank's remark, "I saw a fine carp to-day; I expect
to buy it this day week." Instead of the prime vegetables more
fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully displayed in the
window for the delectation of the military man and his fellow
country-woman the nursemaid, honest Flicoteaux exhibited full
salad-bowls adorned with many a rivet, or pyramids of stewed prunes to
rejoice the sight of the customer, and assure him that the word
"dessert," with which other handbills made too free, was in this case
no charter to hoodwink the public. Loaves of six pounds' weight, cut
in four quarters, made good the promise of "bread at discretion." Such
was the plenty of the establishment, that Moliere would have celebrated
it if it had been in existence in his day, so comically appropriate is
the name.

Flicoteaux still subsists; so long as students are minded to live,
Flicoteaux will make a living. You feed there, neither more nor less;
and you feed as you work, with morose or cheerful industry, according
to the circumstances and the temperament.

At that time his well-known establishment consisted of two
dining-halls, at right angles to each other; long, narrow, low-ceiled
rooms, looking respectively on the Rue Neuve-de-Richelieu and the Place
de la Sorbonne. The furniture must have come originally from the
refectory of some abbey, for there was a monastic look about the
lengt