“You kept your eyes upon the ground—glancing with a petulant expression at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured to yourself the word ‘stereotomic.’ You continued the same inaudible murmur, with a knit brow, as is the custom of a man tasking his memory, until I considered that you sought the Greek derivation of the word ‘stereotomy.’ I knew that you could not find this without being brought to think of atomics, and thus of the theories of Epicurus; and as, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I now was assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter _tirade_ upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday’s ‘_Musée_,’ the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler’s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a very peculiar Latin line upon whose meaning we have often conversed. I mean the line _Perdidit antiquum litera prima sonum._ I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and from certain pungencies connected with this explanation I was aware that you could not have forgotten it. It was clear, therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor cobbler’s immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait—but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as in fact he _was_ a very little fellow—that Chantilly—he would do better at the _Théâtre des Variétés_.” Not long after this we were looking over an evening edition of “Le Tribunal,” when the following paragraphs arrested our attention.