iliars, was a worthy man, a doctor, and, it appears, a very
good doctor, but somewhat brusque, like our own Abernethy; still much
more of a gentleman at heart than the son. He did not like Eugene's
extravagance, and when the latter, about '24, launched out into a
cabriolet, he shipped him off on one of the king's vessels, as a
surgeon; to which fact French literature owed the first novels of the
future author of "Les Mysteres de Paris" and "Le Juif-Errant."

But the father was gathered to his fathers, and Eugene, who had never
taken kindly to a seafaring life, returned to Paris, to spend his
inheritance and to resume his old habits, which made one of his
acquaintances say that "le pere and le fils had _both_ entered upon a
better life." It appears that, though somewhat of a _poseur_ from the
very beginning, he was witty and amusing, and readily found access to
the circle that frequented the gardens of the Tivoli and the Cafe de
Paris.[6] They, in their turn, made him a member of the Jockey Club when
it was founded, which kindness they unanimously regretted, as will be
seen directly.

[Footnote 6: There were two Tivoli gardens, both in the same
neighbourhood, the site of the present Quartier de l'Europe.
The author is alluding to the second, so often mentioned in the
novels of Paul de Kock.--EDITOR.]

The Tivoli gardens, though utterly forgotten at present, was in reality
the birthplace of the French Jockey Club. About the year 1833 a man
named Bryon, one of whose descendants keeps, at the hour I write, a
large livery stables near the Grand Cafe, opened a pigeon-shooting
gallery in the Tivoli; the pigeons, from what I have heard, mainly
consisting of quails, larks, and other birds. The pigeons shot at were
wooden ones, poised up high in the air, but motionless, as we still see
them at the suburban fairs around Paris. Seven years before, Bryon had
started a "society of amateurs of races," to whom, for a certain
consideration, he let a movable stand at private meetings, for there
were no others until the Society for the Encouragement of breeding
French Horses started operations in 1834. But the deliberations at first
took place at Bryon's place in the Tivoli gardens, and continued there
until, one day, Bryon asked the fourteen or fifteen members why they
should not have a locale of their own; the result was that they took
modest quarters in the Rue du Helder, or rather amalgamated with