f bastions, redans, and counterscarps. It
was something after the fashion of the small models of war-ships that
one sees in marine museums. Any one, not in the secret, would have
supposed that the "beards" simply played dominoes. Not at all! They were
pursuing a course of technical insurrection. When they roared at the top
of their lungs "Five on all sides!" certain players seemed to order
a general discharge, and they had a way of saying, "I can not!" which
evidently expressed the despair of a combatant who has burned his
last cartridge. A "beard" in glasses and a stovepipe hat, who had been
refused in his youth at the Ecole Polytechnique, was frightful in the
rapidity and mathematical precision with which he added up in three
minutes his barricade of dominoes. When this man "blocked the six,"
you were transported in imagination to the Rue Transnonain, or to the
Cloitre St. Merry. It was terrible!

As to foreign politics, or the remodelling of the map of Europe, it was,
properly speaking, only sport and recreation to the "beards." It added
interest to the game, that was all. Is it not agreeable, when you are
preparing a discard, at the decisive moment, with one hundred at piquet,
which gives you 'quinte' or 'quatorze', to deliver unhappy Poland; and
when one has the satisfaction to score a king and take every trick, what
does it cost to let the Russians enter Constantinople?

Nevertheless, some of the most solemn "beards" of the Cafe de Seville
attached themselves to international questions, to the great problem of
European equilibrium. One of the most profound of these diplomats--who
probably had nothing to buy suspenders with, for his shirt always hung
out between his waistcoat and trousers--was persuaded that an indemnity
of two million francs would suffice to obtain from the Pope the transfer
of Rome to the Italians; and another Metternich on a small scale assumed
for his specialty the business of offering a serious affront to England
and threatening her, if she did not listen to his advice, with a loss in
a short time of her Indian Empire and other colonial possessions.

Thus the "beards," absorbed by such grave speculations, did not trouble
themselves about the vanity called literature, and did not care a pin
for Amedee Violette's book. Among the long-haired ones, however, we
repeat, the emotion was great. They were furious, they were agitated,
and bristled up; the first enthusiasm over Amedee Violette's verses