I might here--if it so pleased me--dilate upon the matter of habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external metaphysician. I might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white flannel cap and tassels--that his pea-green jerkin was not after the fashion of those worn by the common class of _restaurateurs_ at that day--that the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning costume permitted--that the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particoloured velvet of Genoa--that his slippers were of bright purple, curiously filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding and embroidery--that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like material called _aimable_--that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson devices, floated cavaliery upon his shoulders like a mist of the morning--and that his _tout ensemble_ gave rise to the remarkable words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, “that it was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise, or the rather a very Paradise of perfection.” I might, I say, expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,--but I forbear; merely personal details may be left to historical novelists,--they are beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact. I have said that “to enter the _café_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre was to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius”--but then it was only the man of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the _sanctum_. A sign, consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one side of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a _pâté_. On the back were visible in large letters _Oeuvres de Bon-Bon_. Thus was delicately shadowed forth the twofold occupation of the proprietor. Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the _café_. In a corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An array of curtains, together with a canopy _à la grecque_, gave it an air at once classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonally opposite, appeared, in direct family communion, the properties of the kitchen and the _bibliothèque_. A dish of polemics stood peacefully upon the dresser. Here lay an ovenful of the latest ethics--there a kettle of duodecimo _mélanges_. Volumes of German morality were hand and glove with the gridiron--a toasting-fork might be discovered by the side of Eusebius--Plato reclined at his ease in the frying-pan--and contemporary manuscripts were filed away upon the spit.