I have said that M. Deviolaine often shot out his foot when angry, but never kicked anything; I was wrong; he did kick something that time! I left the room furious, and for three months after I would not enter the house where I had received such a humiliation. How came it about that I knew anything concerning the _Corps Législatif?_ It was in this wise. One day I had seen M. Collard in a blue coat braided with gold. "You are a general, then, like my papa?" I asked him roguishly. "No, my little friend," he answered, "I am a member of the _Corps Législatif._" And from that time I used to read the proceedings of the _Corps Législatif_ to find out what M. Collard said there. But my curiosity was never gratified. However, everybody was not so contemptuous about my learning as M. Deviolaine had shown himself to be. Among others, there were three or four elderly devotees--one of them a certain damsel of sixty-five or sixty-six called Pivert--who appreciated and praised my knowledge. There was no kind of story, whether sacred or profane, that they did not make me relate; and Mademoiselle Pivert in particular, not contented with my recitals, had recourse to my library, in order to get at the source of my information. Well, I gave her an imperfect copy of the _Thousand and One Nights_, which I possessed; it contained only the _Wonderful Lamp_, nothing else. She would be absorbed in the reading of this for a whole week, then she would return me the volume and ask for the next, which I would promise to give her on the morrow; I lent her the same again, which she always conscientiously re-read, and, I must add, with renewed delight. This lasted quite a year, during which time she re-read the same volume fifty-two times. "Well, Mademoiselle Pivert," I asked her at the end of the year, "does the _Thousand and One Nights_ still entertain you?" "Immensely, my little friend," she replied; "but one thing puzzles me; you may be able to explain it, as you are so learned." "What is it, Mademoiselle Pivert?" "Why are they all called Aladdin?" Now, clever though I was, I could not answer Mademoiselle Pivert without confessing the truth, therefore I declared my ignorance, while she regarded it as an unpardonable fault in the unknown poet-author of the _Thousand and One Nights_ to have labelled all his characters _Aladdin._ Notwithstanding all this, the prodigious stock of learning, which was my pride and Mademoiselle Pivert's admiration, was still considered incomplete by my dear mother.