"_Le hasard de la fourchette_," replied the student, "is the resort of the vagabond, the _gamin_, and the _chiffonier_. It lies down by the river-side, near the Halles, and consists of nothing but a shed, a fire, and a caldron. In this caldron a seething sea of oleaginous liquid conceals an infinite variety of animal and vegetable substances. The arrangements of the establishment are beautifully simple. The votary pays his five centimes and is armed by the presiding genius of the place with a huge two-pronged iron fork. This fork he plunges in once;--he may get a calf's foot, or a potato, or a sheep's head, or a carrot, or a cabbage, or nothing, as fate and the fork direct. All men are gamblers in some way or another, and _Le hasard_ is a game of gastronomic chance. But from the ridiculous to the sublime, it is but a step--and while talking of _Le hasard_ behold, we have arrived at the _Maison Dorée_." CHAPTER XIX. A DINNER AT THE MAISON DORÉE AND AN EVENING PARTY IN THE QUARTIER LATIN. The most genial of companions was our new acquaintance, Franz Müller, the art-student. Light-hearted, buoyant, unassuming, he gave his animal spirits full play, and was the life of our little dinner. He had more natural gayety than generally belongs to the German character, and his good-temper was inexhaustible. He enjoyed everything; he made the best of everything; he saw food for laughter in everything. He was always amused, and therefore was always amusing. Above all, there was a spontaneity in his mirth which acted upon others as a perpetual stimulant. He was in short, what the French call a _bon garçon_, and the English a capital fellow; easy without assurance, comic without vulgarity, and, as Sydney Smith wittily hath it--"a great number of other things without a great number of other things."