ntheon, are gone as if they had never been. Whole
streets, I might say whole parishes, have been swept away--whole
chapters of mediaeval history erased for ever.

Well, I love to close my eyes from time to time, and evoke the dear old
haunts from their ruins; to descend once more the perilous steeps of the
Rue St. Jacques, and to thread the labyrinthine by-streets that surround
the Ecole de Medecine. I see them all so plainly! I look in at the
familiar print-shops--I meet many a long-forgotten face--I hear many a
long-forgotten voice--I am twenty years of age and a student again!

Ah me! what a pleasant time, and what a land of enchantment! Dingy,
dilapidated, decrepit as it was, that graceless old Quartier Latin,
believe me, was paved with roses and lighted with laughing gas.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FETE AT COURBEVOIE.

"_Halte la_! I thought I should catch you about this time! They've been
giving you unconscionable good measure to-day, though, haven't they? I
thought Bollinet's lecture was always over by three; and here I've been
moralizing on the flight of Time for more than twenty minutes."

So saying, Mueller, having stopped me as I was coming down the steps of
the Hotel Dieu, linked his arm in mine, drew me into a shady angle under
the lee of Notre Dame, and, without leaving me time to reply, went on
pouring out his light, eager chatter as readily as a mountain-spring
bubbles out its waters.

"I thought you'd like to know about the Tapottes, you see--and I was
dying to tell you. I went to your rooms last night between eight and
nine, and you were out; so I thought the only sure way was to come
here--I know you never miss Bollinet's Lectures. Well, as I was saying,
the Tapottes.... Oh, _mon cher_! I am your debtor for life in that
matter of Milord Smithfield. It has been the making of me. What do you
think? Tapotte is not only going to sit for a companion half-length to
Madame's portrait, but he has given me a commission for half-a-dozen
ancestors. Fancy--half-a-dozen illustrious dead-and-done Tapottes! What
a scope for the imagination! What a bewildering vista of _billets de
banque_! I feel--ah, _mon ami_! I feel that the wildest visions of my
youth are about to be realized, and that I shall see my tailor's bill
receipted before I die!"

"I'm delighted," said I, "that Tapotte has turned up a trump card."

"A trump card? Say a California--a Pactolus--a Golden Calf. Nay, hath
not Tapotte two golden calves?