uld flit across his ever-changing features. Jack
Hobson and Topp, I am sorry to say, joined him with a will in this
double-distilled debauch; and when I attempted to remonstrate with them,
they brazenly asserted that _I_, who am now speaking to you, who have
always, publicly and privately, declared brandy to be the worst of evil
spirits, had taken more of it, to my own cheek, as they slangily
expressed it, than the two of them together; and the waiter, who had
evidently been bribed by them, boldly maintained that _le vieux
monsieur_, as he had the impudence to call me, had swallowed _plus de
trois carafons de fine_; whereupon the fourth man, stepping up to him,
punched his head, which served him right. Now you will hardly believe me
when I tell you that at that very instant Topp forced me back into my
chair, while Jack Hobson pinioned my arms from behind, and the waiter
had the unblushing effrontery to stamp and rave at me like a maniac,
demanding satisfaction or compensation at my hands for the unprovoked
assault committed upon him by _me, coram populo_!--by _me_, who, I beg
to assure you, am the most peaceable man living, and am actually famed
for the mildness of my disposition and the sweetness and suavity of my
temper. And, would you believe it? everybody present, waiters and
guests, and my own two bosom-friends, joined in the conspiracy against
me, and I actually had to give the wretch of a waiter ten francs as a
plaster for his broken pate, and a salve for his wounded honor! Where
was the real culprit all this time, you ask me--the fourth man? Why, he
quietly stood by grinning, and they all and every one of them pretended
not to see him, though Topp and Jack Hobson next morning confessed to me
that they certainly had an indistinct consciousness of the presence
throughout of this miserable intruder.

"How we finished that night I remember not; nor could Jack Hobson or
Emmanuel Topp. All we could conscientiously stand by, if we were
questioned, is that we awoke next morning--the three of us--with some
slight swimming in our heads, and a hazy recollection of a gorgeous
dream of brilliant lights and sounds of music and revelry, and bright
visions of groves and grottoes, and dancing houris (or hussies, as moral
Jack Hobson calls the poor things), and a hot supper at a certain place
in the Passage des Princes, of which I think the name is Peter's.

"I will not tire your courteous patience by a detailed narrative of our