As a last proof of the just implication of the proverb, an English traveller, who does full justice to the eminent qualities of the monarch, says: “Never was there a fat soldier in any country; but the King of Prussia has not even a fat sergeant. A profound knowledge of financial economy is a point on which this sovereign excels. It is also a reason why his troops should never be otherwise than lean.” This observer might have added that Frederick made it a rule never to allow his soldiers any pay on the 31st day of the month. There were thus seven days in the year on which the whole Prussian army _travaillait pour le roi de Prusse_. _Manger de la vache enragée_ is to suffer great privations, to procure with difficulty the merest necessaries of life, and so to be reduced, as it were, to “eat the flesh of a mad cow.” The expression has also come to mean the trials of every kind which, in the course of life, ought to strengthen the body to endure hardness and the mind to a habit of fortitude. On entering upon a house or _appartement_ in Paris it is customary to make a present of a few francs to the concierge, which present is called _le dernier adieu_. The newcomer, if a foreigner, wonders why the first dealings he has with the concierge of his new abode should be so singularly misnamed as “the last farewell.” The words are a corruption of the _Denier à Dieu_—God’s penny—the piece of money given to the person with whom a bargain was concluded, with the intention of taking God to witness that the engagement had been made, and of offering him a pledge that it should be faithfully kept. The sums thus given were bestowed by the receiver in alms to the poor, and were not appropriated, like the _arrhes_, a part payment of what was due to the person with whom an agreement had been made. The lugubrious associations connected with the name of the melancholy building at the back of Notre Dame de Paris encourage the idea that the word _morgue_ must relate to corpses, or in any case to death. M. Rozan disabuses us of the mistake. There was formerly at the entrance of prisons a room where new arrivals were detained for a few days after committal, in order that the keepers might learn to know their faces and appearance sufficiently well to preclude any chance of their escape. Later on the corpses found in the Seine or elsewhere were exposed in this same room, the public being admitted to see them through a small aperture made in the door. Until 1804 the corpses were exposed in the lower jail dependent on the prison of the Grand Châtelet, when they were transferred to the quay of the _Marché Neuf_ in a small building which received the name of _morgue_, an old French word for _face_ or _visage_, and used also to express a fixed or scrutinizing look. It is doubtless in the latter sense that we find the true meaning of the term.