y difficulties on Buvat's, made him sit down near
himself, before a table covered with papers. It is true that at first
Buvat sat on the very edge of his chair; gradually, however, he got
further and further on--put his hat on the ground--took his cane between
his legs, and found himself sitting almost like any one else.

The work that there was to be done did not promise a short
sitting; there were thirty or forty poems on the table to be
classified--numbered, and, as the abbe's servant was his amanuensis,
corrected; so that it was eleven o'clock before they thought that it had
struck nine. They had just finished and Buvat rose, horrified at having
to come home at such an hour. It was the first time such a thing had
ever happened to him; he rolled up the manuscript, tied it with a red
ribbon, which had probably served as a sash to Mademoiselle de Launay,
put it in his pocket, took his cane, picked up his hat, and left the
house, abridging his leave-taking as much as possible. To add to his
misfortunes there was no moonlight, the night was cloudy. Buvat
regretted not having two sous in his pocket to cross the ferry which was
then where now stands the Pont des Arts; but we have already explained
Buvat's theory to our readers, and he was obliged to return as he had
come--by the Quai Conti, the Rue Pont-Neuf, the Rue du Coq, and the Rue
Saint Honore.

Everything had gone right so far, and except the statue of Henri IV. of
which Buvat had forgotten either the existence or the place, and which
had frightened him terribly, and the Samaritaine, which, fifty steps
off, had struck the half-hour without any preparation, the noise of
which had made poor belated Buvat tremble from head to foot, he had run
no real peril, but on arriving at the Rue des Bons Enfants things took a
different look. In the first place, the aspect of the street itself,
long, narrow, and only lighted by two flickering lanterns in the whole
length, was not reassuring, and this evening it had to Buvat a very
singular appearance; he did not know whether he was asleep or awake; he
fancied that he saw before him some fantastic vision, such as he had
heard told of the old Flemish sorceries; the streets seemed alive--the
posts seemed to oppose themselves to his passage--the recesses of the
doors whispered to each other--men crossed like shadows from one side of
the street to the other; at last, when he had arrived at No. 24, he was
stopped, as we have seen, by th