The next time I met Monsieur Jules Sandeau he said to me,—­“I want you to go with me to Madame Emile de Girardin’s to-morrow evening.  She is to read a tragedy she has written in five acts and in verse.  You will meet a good many of our celebrated literary men there.  You must remember that the watchword at that house is, Admiration, more admiration, still more admiration.  You must excite enthusiasm to ecstasy, compliments to lyrical poetry, and carry flattery to apotheosis.  But before we go there I beg you to allow me to return your aristocratic breakfast by a poor literary man’s dinner, which we will eat, not in Bignon’s sumptuous private room, but outside the walls of Paris, at ‘Uncle’ Moulinon’s, which is the rendezvous of the supernumeraries of art and literature.  The wine, roast, and salad are cheaper than you find them on the Boulevard des Italiens, and it is advisable that a fervent neophyte like you should take all the degrees in our freemasonry as soon as possible.  ‘Uncle’ Moulinon’s dining-saloon is to Madame Emile de Girardin’s drawing-room what a conscripts’ barrack is to the official mansion of a French marshal.”

I gratefully accepted the invitation, and at the appointed time I joined Monsieur Jules Sandeau.  We left Paris by the Barriere des Martyrs, climbed Montmartre hill, and entered “Uncle” Moulinon’s dining-saloon when it was full of its usual frequenters.  I had never seen such a sight before.  Imagine a gourmand obliged to witness with gaping mouth all, even the most prosaic details of the culinary preparations for a grand dinner.  The dining-saloon was a long, narrow room, low-pitched and sombre; it was filled with small tables, where in unequal groups were seated young men between eighteen and fifty-five, anticipating glory by tobacco-smoke.  Here were beardless chins accompanied by long locks; there were bushy beards which covered three-quarters of the owners’ cadaverous, wasted faces; yonder were premature bald heads, leaden eyes, feverish glances:  look where you would, you saw everywhere that uneasy, startled air which bore witness to a disordered life.  To the sharp aroma of tobacco were joined the stale and rancid odors peculiar to fifth-rate eating-houses.  I sought in vain upon all those faces youth’s gentle and poetical gayety, the exuberance of gifted natures, the amiable cordiality of travelling-companions pressing on together in different paths.  The most salient characteristics of this bizarre assembly were sickly smiles, an incredible mixture of triviality and affectation, motions of wild beasts trying their teeth and claws, starving attitudes, words tortured to make them look like ideas, a brutal familiarity, and the evident desire to devour all their superiors that they might next crush all their equals.  I was glad when dinner was over, for I felt ill at ease,—­the sight before me differed so much from that I had dreamed.