At the period at which we have arrived, 1817 to 1818, the two cousins went together to the Collège Bourbon, that is to say, Ferdinand Langlé went to the college, and Eugène Sue was supposed to go there. He had a private tutor at his residence, Father Delteil, a plucky Auvergnat five feet in height, who, in fulfilment of his tutorial duties, did not hesitate to have hand-to-hand tussles with his pupil, when he fled into the garden only to be pursued after the fashion of Virgil's Galatea. When in the garden, the rebellious pupil gained an arsenal containing arms defensive and offensive. The defensive arms were the borders of the botanical garden, amongst which he took refuge, where his tutor dared not follow him for fear of trampling under foot the rare plants which the fugitive scholar crushed pitilessly without remorse under foot; the offensive arms were the supporting stakes which bore labels with the scientific names of the plants thereon, stakes which Eugène Sue converted into javelins, and with which he overcame his master with a skill that would have done honour to a pupil of Castor and Pollux, the two cleverest javelin throwers of antiquity.
When it was demonstrated to Eugène's father that his son's vocation was to throw javelins and not to expound Horace and Vergil, he took him away from college, and made him enter as an assistant-surgeon at the hospital attached to the king's household, of which he himself was head-surgeon. It was situated in the rue Blanche. Eugène Sue there found his cousin, Ferdinand Langlé, and the future doctor, Louis Véron.
We have said that Eugène Sue had many of his foster-mother's characteristics: the scamp of the household, ever ready to play wicked tricks, especially on his father, who had just remarried, and who treated him very harshly. But he avenged himself well in respect of this harsh treatment! Dr. Sue employed his pupils in preparing his course of natural history lectures; the preparations were conducted in a splendid anatomical room that had been bequeathed to the Beaux-Arts. It contained, among other things, the brain of Mirabeau, preserved in a glass jar. The legitimate organisers were Eugène Sue and Ferdinand Langlé, and a friend of theirs called Delâtre, who afterwards became, and probably still is, a doctor of medicine; the amateur assistants were Achille Petit, and that old and clever friend James Rousseau, whom I have often mentioned. The preparations were quite dreary enough, but were rendered more so because close at hand were two cupboards full of wine, to which the nectar of the gods was but as the white wine of Limoux: these wines were presents which the Allied Sovereigns had given to Dr. Sue after 1814. There was Tokay, given by the Emperor of Austria; Rhenish wines, given by the King of Prussia; Johannisberg wines, given by M. de Metternich; and, finally, a hundred bottles of Alicante, given by Madame de Morville, which bore the most respectable and venerable date 1750. They had tried every possible means of opening the cupboards, which had virtuously resisted persuasion as well as force; they despaired of ever making the acquaintance of Madame de Morville's Alicante, M. de Metternich's Johannisberg, the King of Prussia's "Liebfraumilch," and the Emperor of Austria's Tokay, otherwise than by the samples which, at Dr. Sue's grand dinners, he poured out for his guests into glasses the size of a thimble, when, one day, while fumbling about in a skeleton, Eugène Sue found, by chance, a bunch of keys. They were the keys of the cupboards! First, they laid hands on a bottle of Tokay, sealed with the Imperial seal, and emptied every drop in it; then they hid the bottle. The next day it was the turn for the Johannisberg, and, the day after, for the "Liebfraumilch"; next followed the Alicante. They disposed of these three bottles in the same way as the first. But James Rousseau, who was the oldest and, consequently, possessed superior knowledge of the world to that of his young friends, who had only just ventured their first steps upon the slippery ground of society, judiciously pointed out that, at the rate they were going, they would quickly make a hole which Dr. Sue's eyes would perceive, and so find out the truth. He therefore made the astute suggestion of drinking but a third of the contents of each bottle, filling them up with some composition which should look as much like wine as possible, recorking them scientifically and putting them back in their places again. Ferdinand Langlé approved the suggestion, and added an amendment: namely, to proceed to the great and solemn occasion of opening the cupboard in old-fashioned style, to the accompaniment of the singing of choruses. Both propositions were carried unanimously. That same day they opened a cupboard to a chorus copied from La Leçon de botanique, by Dupaty. The Corypheus sang—
"Que l'amour et la botanique
N'occupent pas tous les instants;
Il faut aussi que l'on s'applique
A boire le vin des parents!
CHŒUR.
Buvons le vin des grands parents!"
Then precept was followed by example. When started, they composed a second chorus for the work. Their work consisted especially in stuffing the magnificent birds which they received from all four quarters of the globe.
This is the chorus of the workers—
"Goûtons le sort que le ciel nous destine;
Reposons-nous sur le sein des oiseaux;
Mêlons le camphre à la térébenthine.
Et par le vin égayons nos travaux."
Whereupon, they took a second pull at the bottle, which was soon half-emptied. They next had to follow James Rousseau's counsel and fill it up. For this purpose they appointed a chemical committee, comprised of Ferdinand Langlé, Eugène Sue and Delâtre; later, Romieu was added to it. This chemical committee concocted a horrible mixture of treacle, liquorice and burnt sugar, replaced the wine with the improvised mixture, recorked the bottle as carefully as possible and put it back in its place. When it was a white wine, they clarified the preparation with beaten-up white of egg. But punishment occasionally falls upon the guilty.
M. Sue gave large and splendid dinner-parties: at dessert, they sometimes drank Madame de Morville's Alicante, sometimes His Majesty the Emperor of Austria's Tokay, at others, M. de Metternich's Johannisberg, or the King of Prussia's "Liebfraumilch." All went swimmingly if they happened to fall upon an unopened bottle; but, if they lit upon one examined and corrected by the committee of chemistry.... Well, they had to swallow the drink! Dr. Sue tasted his wine, made a slight grimace, and said, "It is good, but wants to be drunk!" This was so great a truth, and the wine did indeed cry out to be drunk, that next day they began drinking it again. Such a performance was bound to end in a catastrophe, and this one proved no exception. One day, when they believed Dr. Sue to be at his country place of Bouqueval, from whence they reckoned he could not well return in the day, they managed, by dint of various seductive overtures to the cook and the servants, to have an excellent dinner served them on the lawn in the garden. All the bird-stuffers, the chemical committee included, were present, lying about on the grass, crowned by roses like Sybarites, drinking Tokay and Johannisberg, or, rather, having drunk it, when, suddenly, the door of the house leading out into the garden opened, and the commander appeared—the commander being Dr. Sue. Every one of them fled and hid; Rousseau alone took up his empty glass, refilled a second glass, and, stumbling forward straight towards the doctor, he said—
"Ah! dear Doctor Sue, this is the famous Tokay! Let us drink the health of the Emperor of Austria!"