The laurel crown was even hinted at again. This, however, Mr. Parnassus modestly but firmly refused, saying that he could not sit crowned in the midst of such a talented assembly merely because his weak endeavours to entertain the company were given out in rhyme instead of in prose; besides which, he added, that he had merely paid the forfeit agreed upon for losing at chess, and that he was entitled to no thanks or marks of honour for merely discharging his debt. The laurel tree outside was therefore suffered to continue its growth until some future occasion, and after various comments on our friend Parnassus' poem, and much pleasant conversation, the company broke up for the night, and each lighting his candle, retired to his own chamber. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. A TALE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.--THE BARBER'S STORY. The following morning broke fine but frosty, and the members of the club being up sufficiently early for that time of the year, they all agreed to take a long stroll before breakfast in the adjacent wood. Indeed, the members of our club lived so thoroughly in an atmosphere of punch and tobacco-smoke that an outing every now and then was requisite in order to air their brains. They strolled out, accordingly, by twos and threes, passing over fields glittering with hoar-frost, until they came to a stile, which having crossed over, they found themselves immediately in a wood. It was a fine old place--that same ancient piece of woodland, where huge oaks and beeches were interspersed with the fir, pine and birch. The fantastic roots that shot out from the gnarled trunks of the majestic oaks, like giants' limbs writhing in mortal agony, were coated here and there in broad irregular patches of dank moss and variously-tinted lichen. Their distorted colossal branches, stripped of their leaves and silvered at their extremities with the hoar-frost, seemed struggling to catch the first beams of a winter sun, while the shadowy outline of the misty purple mass of distant trees brought out in bolder relief and more vigorous hue the foreground thickly strewed with richly-tinted leaves of russet, scarlet and orange. The dank fungus, luxuriant in its foul growth, emerged from the velvet moss as if to outvie in glow the variegated richness of the dried leaves of the forest.