"Come, now, on with the cap, and see you don't first spill a drop."
He was forced to comply; and the unhappy Ude (udus), his face and white jacket streaming with the contents of the plat, was followed out of the room with hisses and bursts of laughter.
Thus went on the dinner, and with it a concert of broken plates, dishes, glasses, and bottles, accompanied by noises of all sorts, which rose to fortissimo as the wine, of which they drank to excess, got into their heads.
The dessert, which succeeded the second course, was ended by what they called a salad. This salad was thus mixed. They turned up the four corners of the table-cloth, and rolled therein all the fragments that were left. At this juncture the waiters disappeared, conjecturing shrewdly that, if they stayed any longer, the feast might be too grand for them. In short, when all that remained of the dessert was bundled well up, the collegians got on the table, and, at the risk of cutting their feet with the fragments of the crockery, and the splinters of the glass, danced thereon, till everything was pounded, smashed, and broken. Then the table-cloth, with all it contained, (the salad,) was thrown out of the window; after it the table, then the chairs, then the rest of the furniture, and, when there was nothing more to destroy, the frenzied youths thought they could do no better than throw themselves out; and all the thirteen "followed the leader," Alfonse, and jumped from the first floor into the court.
There is a saying, that over drunkards watches an especial Providence. But there are, it seems, two; for the students, on this occasion, found one of their own, which doubtless befriended them in this mad leap. Certain it is that none of the party met with the slightest accident, and, gloriously drunk, they rushed out into the street, after the most remarkable orgie that had taken place for some time at Poitiers.
They made a brilliant entrée into the café,—a general place of rendezvous for the students and officers when they were not at daggers drawn.
Two of the latter were playing at billiards when they entered. But Alfonse, without waiting till the game was ended, asked, or rather demanded, in an authoritative tone, that the table should be given up for a single pool to the thirteen.
Thinking that the object was, as usual, to decide who should pay for the dinner, or the demi-tasse et chasse, the players did not seem inclined to comply with this requisition; but when they learnt that a more momentous affair, a duel, was on foot, they hastened to lay down their cues. A duel! everything must yield to that!
There were but few military men present, for that very day there was a soirée at the general-commandant's of the garrison; and those few consisted of veterans, who preferred passing the evening at the café to putting on silk-stockings and shoes, or of chenapans, who in the regiment went by the name of crans, or bourreaux des cranes. The old grognards, however, did not quit the room. The chenapans interchanged glances with each other; and one or two of the sub-lieutenants, who had come to take their demi-tasse before they went to the ball, also remained. They had all more or less formed a shrewd guess of what was to happen; and, for the honour of the service, waited for the quarrel to break out.
In our schools and garrisons at Paris we are totally unacquainted with that esprit de corps which engages a whole regiment, and an entire body of young men, in a duel, when two only are concerned; nor can we form a notion how slight a thing a duel is considered, when it is the custom to decide all questions sword in hand. Habit is all in all; and people soon learn to think no more of fighting than going to breakfast.