During this dialogue the rest of the unfortunates broke their chain with convulsive impatience, and made the floor tremble under the nervous stamping of their feet.  The clerk calmly turned over with his methodically bent finger, a large bundle of letters, and would occasionally pause when the postal hieroglyphics effaced an address under a total eclipse of crests, seals and numbers recklessly heaped on; for the clerk who posts and endorses the letters takes great pains to cover the address with a cloud of ink, this little peculiarity all postmen delight in.  But to return to our dialogue:  “Excuse me, sir,” said the clerk, “did you say your name is spelt with Dar or Tar?” “Tar, sir, Tar! “—­“With a D?”—­“No, sir, with a T., Tarboriech!” “We have nothing for you, sir.”  “Oh, sir, impossible! there certainly must be a letter for me.”  “There is no letter, sir; nothing commencing with T.”  “Did you look for my Christian name, Sidoine?” “But, sir, we don’t arrange the mail according to Christian names.”  “But you know, sir, I am a younger son, and at home I am called Sidoine.”

This interesting dialogue was now drowned by the angry complaining of some young men, who in a state of exasperation stamped up and down the room jerking out an epigrammatic psalm of lamentations.  I’ll give you a few verses of it:  “Heavens! some names ought to be suppressed!  This is getting to be intolerable, when a man has the misfortune to be named Extasboriech, he ought not to have his letters sent to the Poste-Restante!  If I were afflicted with such a name, I would have the Keeper of the Seals to change it.”

The imperturbable clerk smiled blandly through his little barred window, and said, “Gentlemen, we must do our duty scrupulously, I only do for this gentleman what each of you would wish done for yourself under similar circumstances.”

“Oh, of course!” cried out one young man, who was wildly buttoning and unbuttoning his coat as if he wanted to fight the subject through; “but we are not cursed with names so abominable as this man’s!”

“Gentlemen,” said the clerk, “no offensive personalities, I beg.”  Then turning to the miserable culprit, he continued:  “Can you tell me, sir, from what place you expect a letter?” “From Lavalette, monsieur, in the province of Var.”  “Very good; and you think that perhaps your Christian name only is on the address—­Sidoine?”

“My cousin always calls me Sidoine.”

“His cousin is right,” said a sulky voice in the corner.

This, my dear Edgar, is a sample of the non-classified tortures that I suffer every morning in this den of expiation, before I, the last one of all, can reach the clerk’s sanctuary; once there I assume a careless air and gay tone of voice as I negligently call out my name.  No doubt you think this a very simple, easy thing to do, but first listen a moment:  I felt the “Star” gradually sinking under