Meanwhile the boy with the juggler’s motions appeared with the soup, and made exactly the same gestures when he uncovered the tureen as Robert Houdin would have made, and one was surprised not to see a bunch of flowers or a live rabbit fly out.  But no! it was simply soup, and the guests attacked it vigorously and in silence.  After the Rhine wine all tongues were unloosened, and as soon as they had eaten the Normandy sole-oh! what glorious appetites at twenty years of age!—­the five young men all talked at once.  What a racket!  Exclamations crossed one another like rockets.  Gustave, forcing his weak voice, boasted of the performances of a “stepper” that he had tried that morning in the Allee des Cavaliers.  He would have been much better off had he stayed in his bed and taken cod-liver oil.  Maurice called out to the boy to uncork the Chateau-Leoville.  Amedee, having spoken of his drama to the comedian Gorju, called Jocquelet, that person, speaking in his bugle-like voice that came through his bugle-shaped nose, set himself up at once as a man of experience, giving his advice, and quoting, with admiration, Talma’s famous speech to a dramatic poet:  “Above all, no fine verses!” Arthur Papillon, who was destined for the courts, thought it an excellent time to lord it over the tumult of the assembly himself, and bleated out a speech of Jules Favre that he had heard the night before in the legislative assembly.

The timid Amedee was defeated at the start in this melee of conversation.  Maurice also kept silent, with a slightly disdainful smile under his golden moustache, and an attack of coughing soon disabled Gustave.  Alone, like two ships in line who let out, turn by turn, their volleys, the lawyer and the actor continued their cannonading.  Arthur Papillon, who belonged to the Liberal opposition and wished that the Imperial government should come around to “a pacific and regular movement of parliamentary institutions,” was listened to for a time, and explained, in a clear, full voice the last article in the ‘Courrier du Dimanche’.  But, bursting out in his terrible voice, which seemed like all of Gideon’s trumpets blowing at once, the comedian took up the offensive, and victoriously declared a hundred foolish things—­saying, for example, that the part of Alceste should be made a comic one; making fun of Shakespeare and Hugo, exalting Scribe, and in spite of his profile and hooked nose, which should have opened the doors of the Theatre-Francais and given him an equal share for life in its benefits, he affirmed that he intended to play lovers’ parts, and that he meant to assume the responsibility of making “sympathetic” the role of Nero, in Britannicus.

This would have become terribly tiresome, but for the entrance upon the scene of some truffled partridges, which the juggler carved and distributed in less time than it would take to shuffle a pack of cards.  He even served the very worst part of the bird to the simple Amedee, as he would force him to choose the nine of spades.  Then he poured out the chambertin, and once more all heads became excited, and the conversation fell, as was inevitable, upon the subject of women.