The Crayon Papers

his surprise to recognize an old friend and neighbor in the very act of extorting music from a huge violoncello.
    As soon as the evening’s performance was over he tapped his friend on the shoulder; they kissed each other on each cheek, and the musician took him home, and shared his lodgings with him. He had learned music as an accomplishment; by his friend’s advice he now turned to it as a means of support. He procured a violin, offered himself for the orchestra, was received, and again considered himself one of the most fortunate men upon earth.
    Here therefore he lived for many years during the ascendency of the terrible Napoleon. He found several emigrants living, like himself, by the exercise of their talents. They associated together, talked of France and of old times, and endeavored to keep up a semblance of Parisian life in the center of London.
    They dined at a miserable cheap French restaurant in the neighborhood of Leicester Square, where they were served with a caricature of French cookery. They took their promenade in St. James’s Park, and endeavored to fancy it the Tuileries; in short, they made shift to accommodate themselves to everything but an English Sunday. Indeed the old gentleman seemed to have nothing to say against the English, whom he affirmed to be braves gens ; and he mingled so much among them that at the end of twenty years he could speak their language almost well enough to be understood.
    The downfall of Napoleon was another epoch in his life. He had considered himself a fortunate man to make his escape penniless out of France, and he considered himself fortunate to be able to return penniless into it. It is true that he found his Parisian hotel had passed through several hands during the vicissitudes of the times, so as to be beyond the reach of recovery; but then he had been noticed benignantly by government, and had a pension of several hundred francs, upon which, with careful management, he lived independently, and, as far as I could judge, happily. As his once splendid hotel was now occupied as a hotel garni , he hired a small chamber in the attic; it was but, as he said, changing his bedroom up two pair of stairs—he was still in his own house. His room was decorated with pictures of several beauties of former times, with whom he professed to have been on favorable terms: among them was a favorite opera-dancer, who had been the admiration of Paris at the breaking out of the revolution. She had been a protegee of my friend, and one of the few of his youthful favorites who had survived the lapse of time and its various vicissitudes. They had renewed their acquaintance, and she now and then visited him; but the beautiful Psyche, once the fashion of the day and the idol of the parterre , was now a shriveled, little old woman, warped in the back and with a hooked nose.
    The old gentleman was a devout attendant upon levees; he was most zealous in his loyalty, and could not speak of the royal family without a burst of enthusiasm, for he still felt toward them as his companions in exile. As to his poverty he made light of it, and indeed had a good-humored way of consoling himself for every cross and privation. If he had lost his chateau in the country, he had half a dozen royal palaces, as it were, at his command. He had Versailles and St. Cloud for his country resorts, and the shady alleys of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg for his town recreation. Thus all his promenades and relaxations were magnificent, yet cost nothing.
    When I walk through these fine gardens, said he, I have only to fancy myself the owner of them, and they are mine. All these gay crowds are my visitors, and I defy the grand seignior himself to display a greater variety of beauty. Nay, what is better, I have not the trouble of entertaining them. My estate is a perfect Sans Souci, where every one does as he pleases, and no one troubles the owner. All Paris is my theater, and presents me with a continual spectacle. I have a table spread for me in every street, and thousands of waiters ready to fly at my bidding. When my servants have waited upon me I pay them, discharge them, and there’s an end; I have no fears of their wronging or pilfering me when my back is turned. Upon the whole, said the old gentleman with a smile of infinite good humor, when I think upon the various risks I have run, and the manner in which I have escaped them; when I recollect all that I have suffered, and consider all that I at present