Scraps of verses from Ovid, Virgil, and Anacreon, appeared over the entrances of these caverns or crypts, in gilt letters that glimmered through the gloom; while, with a strange incongruity, but in true keeping with the morbid taste of the French, large red and yellow bills, the advertisements of the theatres, the fashionable hotels, concerts, and tailors, &c., appeared on different parts of the walls. At a little distance there bubbled up a sparkling fountain, the plash of which rang hollowly in the vast vaults, as it fell into a large basin, where a number of gold fish were swimming. Over it shone the legend, in gilded letters-- "THIS IS THE WATER OF OBLIVION." "They are strange and frightful places, these Catacombs, Monsieur St. Florian," said I. "True, mon ami," he replied, pausing to take breath; "but famous for the growth of asthmatic coughs, and all diseases of the lungs. Peste! What an uproar these bourgeois make. The affair has quite sobered me, for I was somewhat unsteady before. My face is scratched, I think. Does it seem so?" "Rather." "Mille baionettes! do you say so? and I shall be for guard to-morrow at the chateau--and with this swollen face. Morbleu! what will the ladies think?" "I regret very much, Monsieur le Capitaine, that for me----" "Pho! my dear fellow, no apologies; I care not a sous about it," said my new friend, whom I could now see to be a tall and handsome fellow, whose scarlet uniform, faced and lapelled with blue, fitted him to admiration. His face was prepossessing in its contour, and was very much "set off," or enhanced, by his sparkling dark eyes, his jet moustache, and smart red forage-cap; but he had quite the air of a 'roué,' and the unmistakable bearing of a man about town. "Ha! ha!" he continued, "how messieurs the bourgeois were rolled over each other; that was indeed a coup de grace--the trick of an old routier! Ah! 't was poor Jacques Chataigneur taught me that." "How hollow our voices sound in these vaults," said I, after a pause; for the Frenchman's merry tones and light remarks seemed strange to me amid the deathlike stillness of a place so sad, so gloomy. "The echoes seem to come from an amazing distance." "Oui: I will vouch for it, Monsieur never saw a place like this before. The Parisian dead of a dozen centuries are piled about us, and afford fine scope for philosophy and moralising. Diable! what an uproar there will be among all these separated heads, legs, and arms, when the last trumpet sounds; and many a hearty malediction will be bestowed on Monsieur Lenoir, of the Correctional Police, who, to please the morbid taste of the good bourgeoisie of Paris, made all this ghastly display. Corboeuff! the skulls are all piled up like cannon balls in the arsenal--there were more than two millions of them at the last muster. But, hark!"