Then again it befell that, while the Villon fever was raging within and I was contemplating a career of vice, I had a letter from my uncle Cephas, apprising me that Captivity Waite (she was now Mrs. Eliphalet Parker) had named her first-born after me!  This intelligence had the effect of cooling and sobering me; I began to realize that, with the responsibility the coming and the christening of Captivity’s first-born had imposed upon me, it behooved me to guard with exceeding jealousy the honor of the name which my namesake bore.

While I was thus tempest-tossed, Fanchonette came across my pathway, and with the appearance of Fanchonette every ambition to figure in the annals of bravado left me.  Fanchonette was the niece of my landlady; her father was a perfumer; she lived with the old people in the Rue des Capucins.  She was of middling stature and had blue eyes and black hair.  Had she not been French, she would have been Irish, or, perhaps, a Grecian.  Her manner had an indefinable charm.

It was she who acquainted me with Beranger; that is why I never take up that precious volume that I do not think, sweetly and tenderly, of Fanchonette.  The book is bound, as you see, in a dainty blue, and the border toolings are delicate tracings of white—­all for a purpose, I can assure you.  She used to wear a dainty blue gown, from behind the nether hem of which the most immaculate of petticoats peeped out.

If we were never boys, how barren and lonely our age would be.  Next to the ineffably blessed period of youth there is no time of life pleasanter than that in which serene old age reviews the exploits and the prodigies of boyhood.  Ah, my gay fellows, harvest your crops diligently, that your barns and granaries be full when your arms are no longer able to wield the sickle!

Haec meminisse—­to recall the old time—­to see her rise out of the dear past—­to hear Fanchonette’s voice again—­to feel the grace of springtime—­how gloriously sweet this is!  The little quarrels, the reconciliations, the coquetries, the jealousies, the reproaches, the forgivenesses—­all the characteristic and endearing haps of the Maytime of life—­precious indeed are these retrospections to the hungry eyes of age!

She wed with the perfumer’s apprentice; but that was so very long ago that I can pardon, if not forget, the indiscretion.  Who knows where she is to-day?  Perhaps a granny beldame in a Parisian alley; perhaps for years asleep in Pere la Chaise.  Come forth, beloved Beranger, and sing me the old song to make me young and strong and brave again!

Let them be served on gold—­
The wealthy and the great;
Two lovers only want
A single glass and plate! 
Ring ding, ring ding,
Ring ding ding—­
Old wine, young lassie,
Sing, boys, sing!

XI

DIAGNOSIS OF THE BACILLUS LIBRORUM

For a good many years I was deeply interested in British politics.  I was converted to Liberalism, so-called, by an incident which I deem well worth relating.  One afternoon I entered a book-shop in High Holborn, and found that the Hon. William E. Gladstone had preceded me thither.  I had never seen Mr. Gladstone before.  I recognized him now by his resemblance to the caricatures, and by his unlikeness to the portraits which the newspapers had printed.