“Done!” echoed Horace, pathetically.  “Shade of Apicius! inspire me...but, no—­he’s not listening.”

“Hold!  I have it.  We’ll make our wills in one another’s favor, and die.”

“I should prefer to die when the wind is due East, and the moon at the full,” said Horace, contemplatively.

“True—­besides, there is still la mere Gaudissart.  Her cutlets are tough, but her heart is tender.  She would not surely refuse to add one more breakfast to the score!”

Horace shook his head with an air of great despondency.

“There was but one Job,” said he, “and he has been dead some time.  The patience of la mere Gaudissart has long since been entirely exhausted.”

“I am not so sure of that.  One might appeal to her feelings, you know—­have a presentiment of early death—­wipe away a tear...  Bah! it is worth the effort, anyhow.”

“It is a forlorn hope, my dear fellow, but, as you say, it is worth the effort. Allons donc! to the storming of la mere Gaudissart!”

And with this they pushed aside the dominoes, took down their hats, nodded to Mueller, and went out.

“There go two of the brightest fellows and most improvident scamps in the whole Quartier,” said my companion.  “They are both studying for the bar; both under age; both younger sons of good families; and both destined, if I am not much mistaken, to rise to eminence by-and-by.  Horace writes for Figaro and the Petit Journal pour Rire—­Theophile does feuilleton work—­romances, chit-chat, and political squibs—­rubbish, of course; but clever rubbish, and wonderful when one considers what boys they both are, and what dissipated lives they lead.  The amount of impecuniosity those fellows get through in the course of a term is something inconceivable.  They have often only one decent suit between them—­and sometimes not that.  To-day, you see, they are at their wits’ end for a breakfast.  They have run their credit dry at Procope and everywhere else, and are gone now to a miserable little den in the Rue du Paon, kept by a fat good-natured old soul called la mere Gaudissart.  She will perhaps take compassion on their youth and inexperience, and let them have six sous worth of horsebeef soup, stale bread, and the day before yesterday’s vegetables.  Nay, don’t look so pitiful!  We poor devils of the Student Quartier hug our Bohemian life, and exalt it above every other.  When we have money, we cannot find windows enough out of which to fling it—­when we have none, we start upon la chasse au diner, and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.  We revel in the extremes of fasting and feasting, and scarcely know which we prefer.”

“I think your friends Horace and Theophile are tolerably clear as to which they prefer,” I remarked, with a smile.

“Bah! they would die of ennui if they had always enough to eat!  Think how it sharpens a man’s wits if—­given the time, the place, and the appetite—­he has every day to find the credit for his dinners!  Show me a mathematical problem to compare with it as a popular educator of youth!”