“How sedate and sage one is,” he writes, “on only three sous. Eating my bread and cheese, and seeing half a bottle of the twenty-five sous wine left, I thought it too extravagant to open a bottle of the good. I tried to get down the bad, constantly thinking on the other, which was in sight. I stuck to the bad and got it all down. Then to pay myself for this heroism, I treated myself to a large tumbler of the true Roussillon. I am of Santara’s opinion that though a man may be a little the poorer for drinking good wine, yet he is, under its influence, much more able to bear poverty.” Farther on he sets down: “It is now so cold that I should be glad of a fire, but to that there are financial objections. I was near going to bed without writing, for it is very cold, and I have but two stumps of wood left. By the way, I wear no surtout these days, for a great many philosophic reasons, the principal being that I have not got one. The old greatcoat, which I brought from America, will serve for traveling if I ever travel again.” Although official France shuts its doors on Aaron, unofficial France does not. The excellent Volney, of a better memory than the King of Westphalia or the slily skulking Talleyrand, remembers Richmond Hill. Volney hunts out Aaron in his poor lodgings, laughs at his penury, and offers gold. Aaron also laughs, and puts back the kindly gold-filled hand. “Very well,” says Volney. “Some other day, when you are a little more starved. Meanwhile, come with me; there are beautiful women and brave men who are dying to meet the renowned Colonel Burr.” Again in salon and drawing-room is Aaron the lion--leaving the most splendid scenes to return to his poor, barren den in the back street. And yet he likes the contrast. He goes home from the Duchess d’Alberg’s and writes this: “The night bad, and the wind blowing down my chimney into the room. After several experiments as to how to weather the gale, I discovered that I could exist by lying flat on the floor. Here, on the floor, reposing on my elbows, a candle by my side, I have been reading ‘L’Espion Anglos,’ and writing this. When I got up just now for pen and ink, I found myself buried in ashes and cinders. One might have thought I had lain a month at the foot of Vesuvius.” Aaron, having leisure and a Yankee fancy for invention, decides to remedy the chimney. He calls in a chimney doctor, of whom there are many in chimney-smoking Paris, and assumes to direct the bricklaying energies of that scientist. The _fumiste_ rebels; he objects that to follow Aaron’s directions will spoil the chimney. “Monsieur,” returns Aaron grandly, “that is my affair.”