One does not meet the same people in the public promenades two days running, but, though the people change, the type of conversation is pretty much the same always. Imperceptibly the tone of mind becomes lower. If you add to this the influence of the narcotic contained in tobacco, you can judge what the state of society will be in half a century if the taste for the cigar goes on increasing incessantly. We shall have about as much intellectual activity in France in 1950 as there is in Holland at the present time. The reader will see that we have travelled far from Rousseau and Romieu. We have only Rousseau now to deal with, and let us, therefore, return to him. CHAPTER II The lantern_--La Chasse et l'Amour_--Rousseau's part in it--The couplet about the hare--The _couplet de facture_--How there may be hares _and_ hares--Reception at l'Ambigu--My first receipts as an author--Who Porcher was--Why no one might say anything against Mélesville De Leuven and I went to hunt up Rousseau, who was then living in the rue du Petit-Carreau with a woman. We found him in a mad state of mind. The night before, he had been supping, and supping very well, too, at Philippe's--I may as well mention here that I can recommend Philippe as the only man left at whose place one can still have a good supper. Rousseau had left with Romieu at about one o'clock in the morning, just tipsy. He had not taken two steps before the fresh air had its usual effect, and he became drunk; after walking about a hundred paces he was dead drunk. Romieu made heroic efforts to lead him as far as he could; but, when he had been dragged down to the pavement twice, he decided to place him in the safest position possible and then to leave him. Consequently, at thirty paces from his door, recognising the impossibility of dragging him farther, Romieu laid him comfortably down outside a fruiterer's shop-door, on a heap of cabbage leaves and dead carrot tops which he found there, propping his head up against a wall. Then, by the aid of his knuckles and boots, he knocked up a grocer hard by, where he bought a lantern, which he lighted and placed by Rousseau's side. Then he bid adieu to his unlucky friend, addressing him in the following terms, half in satisfaction of a duty fulfilled and half in supplication to the Powers above:-- "And now, sleep peacefully, son of Epicurus. No one will trample upon you!" Rousseau spent the night quite quietly, thanks to the lamp which kept watch over him, and he woke up finding two or three sous in his hand. Some kind souls had given him alms, taking him for a poor wretched outcast. But, as he was in his own neighbourhood, when daylight broke, he was recognised by both grocer and fruiterer, and was exceedingly humiliated by the fact. We comforted him by the offer of a good breakfast at the _café des Variétés_, and, being Sunday, and therefore a holiday, we afterwards took him off to Adolphe's rooms.