to the light, "and perhaps nowhere so good
as in this town of ours."

"The gentleman is right," says M. Falcon,
with an oath of the true western fashion—
only in French—"let them match our wines
if they can! Pardieu! I say what is known,
and can be proved!"

"He has reason!" M. le chef says, glancing
at me ever so little. "Trust to a clean country
cabaret for pure honest wines!"

"Yes," I reply, "I have travelled over
many leagues of France, and I think the best
wines I have fallen in with, were at an old
cabaret in the south."

"Where, if I may take the liberty?" M. le
chef asks with interest.

"Let me see," I answer reflecting, "it is so
long since. Ah to be sure—down near
Troyes somewhere, at a house called the
Yellow Tiger!"

M. Rabbe was about to drink when I began
this speech. At the moment the words Yellow
Tiger were spoken, his glass was not an
inch from his lips. He started. His arm
shook so violently, that the wine ran over
his glass. Then he swallowed it all off—
every drop, with a gulp—hastily to hide his
white lips, and stole a cowering look round
the table, just catching M. le chef in the
act of leaning forward with his hands upon his
knees, watching him with intense curiosity.

"What are you all looking at me for in this
way?" he said angrily.

"We are concerned for monsieur's health,"
says the chef, "lest he should be seized
with sudden sickness. That name of Yellow
Tiger seemed to have such strange effect."

M. Rabbe looks at him uneasily for a
moment; then laughs more uneasily still,
and fills out for himself another bumper of
Volnay.

"To go back to this Yellow Tiger wine,"
says M. le chef, reaching over for the flask,
"was it so good now, really?"

"Famous! And I ought to remember it
well. For the night I drank of it there was
murder done in the Yellow Tiger Inn!"

Again M. Rabbe's glass was stayed in its
course, and the precious Volnay scattered on
the floor. He was looking over at me with
a painful, devouring expression, which I shall
never forget.

"Monsieur must be unwell," says M. le
chef, with anxiety; "the gentleman will
recollect that I said so at first."

"I am very unwell," gasps M. Rabbe
staggering up on his feet, and not taking his
eyes from me, "very unwell indeed. I shall
go out into the fresh air, it will revive me."

"The thing of all others in the world," M.
le chef says; "nothing is so good as the cool
fresh air, with a little eau de Cologne to
the temples. Stay," says M. le chef, rising
with good-natured alacrity, "let monsieur
lean on me, till he gets to the garden. He is
weak evideutly. Oh, there is nothing like
the cool air!"

So M. le chef gets monsieur's arm under
his own. They go out together, and M. le
chef gives me one queer look from over his
shoulder.

That evening it fell out that a strong party
of gens-d'armes, with bayonets fixed and
drawn closely round a hand-cuffed man, came
past the Son of France Inn. There, a tall
thin lady in black stood at a front window.
It was nearly certain, I was informed, that
the destiny of the handcuffed man, would
be resolved at the Bagnes or galleys at
Brest.

    A COMPANIONABLE SPARROW.

I FOUND myself by the decrees of the Fates,
in the winter of eighteen hundred and
fifty-five (one of the coldest of recent winters, and
during one of the coldest of December nights)
at an evening party in the rue de la Ville
l'Evêque, in Paris. The heroine of this evening
party for me was neither a rosy
mademoiselle nor a queenly madame, but a
sparrow (la Pierrette). During a jubilee moment
of emancipation from the news and the wit,
the music and the dancing, the men
exhibiting their distinction, and the women
displaying their beauty, I espied a little
brown ball upon the top corner of a large
and lofty gilded mirror, fastened against a
wall in a corner of one of the rooms.
Intelligence is a substantive feminine, I suppose,
on account of her curiosity; and my intelligence
immediately rushed into my eyes, and
began peeping, staring, and darting glances,
to discover what the little brown ball upon
the gilt cornice might be. She soon found
out it was a sparrow rolled up into a ball,
with its beak under its wing, and fast asleep.
My intelligence was immensely enjoying the
problem how a sparrow could have been
thus tamed and domesticated, when the
contagion of curiosity spread from me to my
neighbours in the room, and from room to
room throughout the whole assembly, just as
a circular ripple makes more and more
circular ripples upon the surface of water. I
soon found I was in a crowd of persons all
gazing in one direction. Treble voices with
bass murmurs accompanying them made
quite a concert of melodious cries of wonder.
Just before the mirror, marble arms held up
candles statuesquely, yet nearer and nearer
and higher and higher. Some of these heads
and arms, done in stone, would have adorned
a sculpture-room. But the sparrow was
roused by the light. Awakened and startled,
rather than frightened, the sparrow flew
round and round the room, and alighted upon
its gilded perch again. And now, in
compliance with my repeated requests,
Mademoiselle l'Apprivoiseuse de Moineau has
been kind enough to write out for me the
story of this sparrow, and I have the pleasure
of submitting it to my readers.