lpture. Oh, what hypocrisy it
is! The only genuine thing about them is the spring costume, which they
have provided to figure on this particular occasion.

'And altogether, old fellow,' continued Vedrine, as he drew his friend
out of the studio, 'of all the affectations of Paris, of all the
hypocrisies of society, the most shameless, the most amusing, is the
pretended taste for art. It's enough to make you die of laughing;
everyone performing a mummery, which imposes on nobody. And music, the
same! You should just see them at the Pop!'

They went down a long arcaded passage, full of the same odd vegetation,
sown there by all the winds of heaven, breaking out in green from the
hard-beaten ground, and peeping among the paintings on the shrivelled
and smoke-blackened walls, Presently they came to the principal court,
formerly gravelled, but now a field, in which were mingled wild grasses,
plantain, pimpernel, groundsel, and myriads of tiny stems and heads.
In the middle, fenced off with boards, was a bed of artichokes,
strawberries, and pumpkins, looking like the garden of some squatter at
the edge of a virgin forest; and, to complete the illusion, beside it
was a little building of brick.

'It's the bookbinder's garden, and that is his shop,' said Vedrine,
pointing to a board over the half-open door, displaying in letters a
foot long the inscription,

ALBIN FAGE,

Bookbinding in all its branches.

Fage had been bookbinder to the Cour des Comptes and the Conseil d'Etat,
and having obtained leave to keep his lodge, which had escaped the fire,
was now, with the exception of the caretaker, the sole tenant of the
building. 'Let us go in for a minute,' said Vedrine; 'you will find him
a remarkable specimen.' He went nearer and called, 'Fage! Fage!' but
the humble workshop was empty. In front of the window was the binder's
table, on which, among a heap of parings, lay his shears. Under a
press were some green ledgers capped with copper. Strange to remark,
everything in the room--the sewing-press, the tressel-table, the
empty chair in front of it, the shelves piled with books, and even the
shaving-mirror hung upon the latch--was on a diminutive scale, adapted
to the height and reach of a child of twelve years old. It might have
been taken for the house of a dwarf, or of a bookbinder of Lilliput.

'He is a humpback,' whispered Vedrine to Frey-det, 'and a lady's
man into the bargain, all scent and poma