This menace had its effect: the _pauvre chef_, pale as death, and all cotton cap in hand, crawled into the room. He was greeted with deafening shouts. "Come here!" said Alfonse. "Do you take us for the officers? What do you mean by serving us in this manner,--eh?" The man of the spit stammered out an apology. Alfonse looked at him askance. "If I served you right," said he, "I should make you eat this detestable _rôti_ of yours; but, as it is the first time of happening, my chastisement shall be a paternal one. Hold out your cotton cap." The _chef_ obeyed, and Alfonse turned out of a dish into it an enormous clouted cream (_omelet soufflé_), and said, "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.