But, as my father would often say, aprôpos of nothing, “Facts, my boy, are stronger than prejudices;” and a very undeniable fact was that, though billiards, and smoking, and boating, and spooning by moonlight are highly agreeable pursuits, they could not in any fashion whatever contribute to my existence when it pleased heaven to call my father away. I wonder I never thought of this. However, when I was hard upon three-and-twenty, a change came. This is the story of it. One morning I saw a letter addressed to my father lying upon the breakfast-table. It bore the English post-mark, and without taking further thought of it I went to the window and amused myself with staring out until my father should enter. Somehow, I have the clearest recollection of that morning, and of a trivial incident that made up the life of the street whilst I looked down upon it. It was early morning--nine o’clock. The gay sunshine streamed brightly upon the shop-windows and the white pavement, and threw a coquettish intelligence upon the brown and comely features of a smart _femme de chambre_, who had thrown up a window opposite to shake a duster, which, I took it, she meant to continue shaking whilst I remained visible. In the middle of the road were two soldiers, little red-trowsered men, so neat and small, you would have said that they had just been unpacked at the toyman’s at the corner. A priest passed, reading a book, with his eyes in the corners of their sockets; the little soldiers whipped up their hands, gave him a salute, and fell to talking again. _Ciel!_ how they gesticulated, shrugged, brandished their fists, smote their breasts, and struck attitudes! In London a crowd would have surrounded them in two minutes, and a hundred pocket-handkerchiefs would have been lost for ever. Now what were they grimacing, grinning, grunting, and growling over? Probably a description. Alphonse was telling Jules how Auguste had beaten Amedée last night at dominoes; the stakes, sugar-and-water all round, a matter of _cinquante centimes_. Amedée was _abimé_. _Va pour un croquant!_ You saw his face this morning, Jules? _Tenez!_ ’twas green as grass. This Amedée bears misfortune like a Russian. (To-day it would be a Prussian). Bah! ... here a shrug expressed the rest: in which the ears stood out along the shoulders, in which the back became a hump, in which the tension of the corporeal frame lifted the trousers up the calves, and exhibited everything but socks--in which the whole person was transformed into a rounded twist of silent eloquence, so convincing that I saw Monsieur Galette in the pastry-cook’s shop, nod his head with a gesture of acute appreciation of the significance of the martial convulsion. Thus universally intelligible in France is the language of contortion.