"Down with wisdom! forget all I have said to you. Be neither prudish, nor prudent, nor prud'hommes. I drink the health of jollity: so let us be jolly. Let us complete our legal studies by folly and good food, for indigestion should run in a curricle with digests. Let Justinian be the male and merriment the female! Live, O creation; the world is one large diamond; I am happy, and the birds are astounding. What a festival all around us; the nightingale is a gratis Elleviou. Summer, I salute thee. O Luxembourg! O ye Georgics of the Rue Madame and the Allée de l'Observatoire! O ye dreaming soldiers! O ye delicious nurses, who, while taking care of children, fancy what your own will be like! the Pampas of America would please me if I had not the arcades of the Odéon. My soul is flying away to the Virgin forests and the savannas. All is glorious: the flies are buzzing in the light; the sun has sneezed forth the humming-bird. Kiss me, Fantine!"
He made a mistake and kissed Favourite.
[1] An untranslatable pun based on chêne-liège and peau.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE DEATH OF A HORSE.
"It is a better dinner at Édon's than at Bombarda's," Zéphine exclaimed.
"I prefer Bombarda," Blachevelle declared; "there is more luxury: it is more Asiatic. Just look at the dining-room with its mirrors: look at the knives, they are silver-handled here and bone at Édon's; now, silver is more precious than bone."
"Excepting for those persons who have a silver chin," Tholomyès observed.
He was looking at this moment at the dome of the Invalides which was visible from Bombardas window. There was a pause.