"Don’t," I returned. "But what shall we do? You are pretty poor company to-night. There is the Closerie des Lilas, and Mabille, and the Café des Drôles." I would none of them. I sat with my head in my hands, staring into the embers of the fading fire. I was crying a man’s tears, thinking of the home fireside at evening, three thousand miles away. And if you think a man cannot cry without the shedding of material tears, life has taught you little of physiology; for this is the chief difference between man and woman. At last Pierce rose up and said French and English profanities, and thought it no colder out of doors than within; therefore I put on my overcoat and a fez cap—such as we wore in those days—and followed him down-stairs, across the courtyard, and under its gray escutcheon and armorial bearings, and so into the outer air. A band of noisy students was passing out of the narrow Rue des Grands Augustins, singing. How often I have heard it, and how it rings in my head after these many long years! Par derrier’ chez ma tante I’ya-t-un bois joli; Le rossignol y chante Et le jour et la nuit. Gai lon la, gai le rosier Du joli mois de mai. Across the way two little maids in caps were filling their tins from the steaming heap of fried potatoes in the tiny shop of my old acquaintance Madame Beaumain. We left the gayer streets and soon were walking through the maze of narrow avenues and lanes long since destroyed to make way for the wide boulevards of the Second Empire. We went along aimlessly, as it seemed to me, until presently Pierce stopped, exclaiming, "Yes, it is here," and turned from the Rue de l’Université into the short _impasse_ at its further end. Here he paused. "Well," I said, "where next?" "My dear M——," he said, "I can’t stand you alone any longer. I ’m going to take you to call on M. Des Illes." Now, M. Des Illes was an acquaintance of a minute (to be accurate, of five minutes), and was nothing to me on earth but a quaint remembrance. I said I would go anywhere, call on devil or angel, do as he liked. As I made clear to him the amiability of my indifferent mood, he paused at the doorway of No. 37. "Is this the place?" "Yes, 37 _bis_." Upon this he rang, and the door opening in the usual mysterious Paris fashion, a concierge put out her head at the side of the passage, which seemed long and narrow. "Is M. Des Illes at home?" "Oui; tout en face, tout au fond; Porte à gauche."