At the ministry to which Rabourdin belonged there flourished, as general-secretary, a certain Monsieur Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx, one of those men whom the tide of political events sends to the surface for a few years, then engulfs on a stormy night, but whom we find again on a distant shore, tossed up like the carcass of a wrecked ship which still seems to have life in her.

If the Mediterranean, the venerable (and sometimes atrociously ill- tempered) nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted by Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible young men(all, however, older than myself) that, as if drunk with Provencal sunshine, frittered life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac's "Histoire des Treize" qualified by a dash of romance DE CAPE ET D'EPEE.

"LA MUSIQUE," says Marmontel, in those "Contes Moraux" {*1} which in all our translations, we have insisted upon calling "Moral Tales," as if in mockery of their spirit -- "la musique est le seul des talents qui jouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des temoins.