ary's bosom friend was a dealer in claret and cognac, who
lived about a league from the city, and always passed his evenings at
the _estaminet_. He was a gross, corpulent fellow, raised from a
full-blooded Gascon breed, and sired by a comic actor of some
reputation in his way. He was remarkable for nothing but his
good-humor, his love of cards, and a strong propensity to test the
quality of his own liquors by comparing them with those sold at other
places.

As evil communications corrupt good manners, the bad practices of the
wine-dealer won insensibly upon the worthy notary; and before he was
aware of it, he found himself weaned from domino and sugar-water, and
addicted to piquet and spiced wine. Indeed, it not infrequently
happened that, after a long session at the _estaminet_, the two friends
grew so urbane that they would waste a full half-hour at the door in
friendly dispute which should conduct the other home.

Though this course of life agreed well enough with the sluggish,
phlegmatic temperament of the wine-dealer, it soon began to play the
very deuce with the more sensitive organization of the notary, and
finally put his nervous system completely out of tune. He lost his
appetite, became gaunt and haggard, and could get no sleep. Legions of
blue-devils haunted him by day, and by night strange faces peeped
through his bed-curtains and the nightmare snorted in his ear. The
worse he grew the more he smoked and tippled; and the more he smoked
and tippled, why, as a matter of course, the worse he grew. His wife
alternately stormed, remonstrated, entreated; but all in vain. She
made the house too hot for him--he retreated to the tavern; she broke
his long-stemmed pipes upon the andirons--he substituted a
short-stemmed one, which, for safe-keeping, he carried in his waistcoat
pocket.

Thus the unhappy notary ran gradually down at the heel. What with his
bad habits and his domestic grievances, he became completely hipped.
He imagined that he was going to die, and suffered in quick succession
all the diseases that ever beset mortal man. Every shooting pain was
an alarming symptom--every uneasy feeling after dinner a sure
prognostic of some mortal disease. In vain did his friends endeavor to
reason, and then to laugh him out of his strange whims; for when did
ever jest or reason cure a sick imagination? His only answer was, "Do
let me alone; I know better than you what ails me."

Well, gentlemen, things