Disguises are also the order of the day. A poet, whose verses were received at the Comédie Française with enthusiasm during the siege, managed to get away, thanks to an official on the Northern Railway, who lent him his coat and cap. Another poet—they are an ingenious race—conceived a plan of greater boldness. One day on the Boulevard he called a fiacre, having first taken care to choose a coachman of respectable age, “_Cocher_, drive to the Rue Montorgueil, to the best restaurant you can find.” On the way the poet reasoned thus to himself: “This coachman has in his pocket, as they all have, a Communal passport, which allows him to go out and come into Paris as he pleases; let me remember the fourth act of my last melodrama, and I am saved.” The cab stopped in front of a restaurant of decent exterior not far from Philippe’s. The young man went in, asked for a private room, and told the waiter to send up the coachman, as he had something to say to him, and to procure a boy to hold the horse. The coachman walked into the room, where the breakfast was ready served. “Now, coachman, I am going to keep you all day, so do not refuse to drink a glass with me to keep up your strength.” An hour after the poet and the coachman had breakfasted like old friends; six empty bottles testified that neither one nor the other were likely to die of thirst. The poet grumbled internally to himself as he thought of the three bottles of Clos-Vougeot, one of Léoville, two of Moulin-au-Vent, that had been consumed, and the fellow not drunk yet. Then he determined to try surer means, and called to the waiter to bring champagne. “It is no use, young fellow,” laughed the coachman, who was familiar at least, if he was not drunk; “champagne won’t make any difference; if you counted on that to get my passport, you reckoned without your host!”—“The devil I did,” cried the poor young man, horrified to see his scheme fall through, and to think of the prodigious length of the bill he should have to pay for nothing.—“Others, have tried it on, but I am too wide awake by half,” said the coachman, adding as he emptied the last bottle into his glass, “give me two ten-franc pieces and I will get you through.”—“How can I be grateful enough?” cried the poet, although in reality he felt rather humiliated to find that the grand scene in his fourth act had not succeeded.—“Call the waiter, and pay the bill.” The waiter was called, and the bill paid with a sigh. “Now give me your jacket.”—“My jacket?”—“Yes, this thing in velvet you have on your back.” The poet did as he was bid. “Now your waistcoat and trousers.”—“My trousers! Oh, insatiable coachman!”—“Make haste will you, or else I shall take you to the nearest guard-room for a confounded _réfractaire_, as you are.” The clothes were immediately given up. “Very well; now take mine, dress yourself in them, and let’s be off.” While the young man was putting on with decided distaste the garments of the _cocher_, the latter managed