When you were admitted into that charming and desirable inner circle of the Nodier family, you could dine with them as often as you liked. If one, two or three covers were needed beyond the number already laid, they were added; if the table had to be enlarged, it was made longer. But unlucky was the man who happened to be the thirteenth! he was pitilessly placed at a little table to dine by himself, unless a fourteenth guest, still less expected than he, should turn up to relieve him of his penance. I was very soon among the number of the more intimate friends of whom I have just spoken, and my place at the table was settled once for all, between Madame Nodier and Marie Nodier. When I appeared at the door I was greeted with exclamations of joy; they all rushed at me, from Nodier downwards, who stretched out his two great arms to embrace me or shake me by the hand. At the end of a year, from being an accepted fact, my place became recognised as mine by right: it remained vacant for me until after the soup course; then they ventured to fill it, but if I happened to arrive, either ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or half an hour late, even if I did not arrive until dessert, the interloper got up, or was made to do so, and my place given up to me. Nodier used to make out that I was as good as a fortune to him, because I saved him from doing the talking; but what may have been a pleasure, in this respect, to the idle master of the house, was a source of sorrow to his guests: to relieve the most fascinating talker imaginable from conversing was tantamount to a crime. Nevertheless, when I was charged with being viceroy of the conversation I was on my mettle to fill my position to the best of my abilities. There are certain houses wherein one is spontaneously brilliant; others where one is dull no matter how one tries to be the reverse. There were three houses where I was at my best, three houses in which my spirits ever rose and scintillated with youthful exuberance; these houses were Nodier's, Madame Guyet-Desfontaines' and Zimmermann's. At all other places I could still be entertaining, but merely in the ordinary way of social intercourse. However, no matter whether Nodier himself was the talker (and when this was the case, grown-up people and small children all held their peace to listen); whether his silence left the conversation to Dauzats, to Bixio or to me, the time flew by unheeded until the close of dinner was reached--a dinner that might have been envied by the most powerful prince of the earth, provided his tastes were intellectually inclined. Dinner over, coffee was handed round, while we were still at table. Nodier was far too much of a Sybarite to rise from the table to take his Mocha standing uncomfortably in a half-warmed salon, when he could take it lolling back in his chair, in a warm dining-room, well scented with the aroma of fruits and liqueurs. During this last act, or rather this