"P-r-r," cried the Colonel; "but we have had the Rhine."
"We did not keep it. And I should not say I had a francpiece if I borrowed it from your purse and had to give it back the next day."
Here there arose a very general hubbub of voices, all raised against M. Savarin. Enguerrand, like a man of good ton, hastened to change the conversation.
"Let us leave these poor wretches to their sour wines and toothaches. We drinkers of the champagne, all our own, have only pity for the rest of the human race. This new journal 'Le Sens Commun' has a strange title, Monsieur Savarin."
"Yes; 'Le Sens Commun' is not common in Paris, where we all have too much genius for a thing so vulgar."
"Pray," said the young painter, "tell me what you mean by the title 'Le
Sens Commun.' It is mysterious."
"True," said Savarin; "it may mean the Sensus communis of the Latins, or the Good Sense of the English. The Latin phrase signifies the sense of the common interest; the English phrase, the sense which persons of understanding have in common. I suppose the inventor of our title meant the latter signification."
"And who was the inventor?" asked Bacourt.
"That is a secret which I do not know myself," answered Savarin.
"I guess," said Enguerrand, "that it must be the same person who writes the political leaders. They are most remarkable; for they are so unlike the articles in other journals, whether those journals be the best or the worst. For my own part, I trouble my head very little about politics, and shrug my shoulders at essays which reduce the government of flesh and blood into mathematical problems. But these articles seem to be written by a man of the world, and as a man of the world myself, I read them."