Somewhat perplexed by the general aspect of the club, I turned to my companion for an explanation.

“Is it possible,” I asked, “that these amazing individuals are all artists and gentlemen?”

“Artists, every one,” replied Dalrymple; “but as to their claim to be gentlemen, I won’t undertake to establish it.  After all, the Chicards are not first-rate men.”

“What are they, then?”

“Oh, the Helots of the profession—­hewers of wood engravings, and drawers of water-colors, with a sprinkling of daguerreotypists, and academy students.  But hush—­somebody is going to sing!”

And now, heralded by a convulsive flourish from the President’s bugle, a young Chicard, whose dilapidated outer man sufficiently contradicted the burthen of his song, shouted with better will than skill, a chanson of Beranger’s, every verse of which ended with:—­

     “J’ai cinquante ecus,
     J’ai cinquante ecus,
     J’ai cinquante ecus de rente!”

Having brought this performance to a satisfactory conclusion, the singer sat down amid great clapping of hands and clattering of glasses, and the President, with another flourish on the bugle, called upon one Monsieur Tourterelle.  Monsieur Tourterelle was a tall, gaunt, swarthy personage, who appeared to have cultivated his beard at the expense of his head, since the former reached nearly to his waist, while the latter was as bare as a billiard-ball.  Preparing himself for the effort with a wine-glass full of raw cognac, this gentleman leaned back in his chair, stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and plunged at once into a doleful ballad about one Mademoiselle Rosine, and a certain village aupres de la mer, which seemed to be in an indefinite number of verses, and amused no one but himself.  In the midst of this ditty, just as the audience had begun to testify their impatience by much whispering and shuffling of feet, an elderly Chicard, with a very bald and shiny head, was discovered to have fallen asleep in the seat next but one to my own; whereupon my nearest neighbor, a merry-looking young fellow with a profusion of rough light hair surmounted by a cap of scarlet cloth, forthwith charred a cork in one of the candles, and decorated the bald head of the sleeper with a comic countenance and a pair of huge mustachios.  An uproarious burst of laughter was the immediate result, and the singer, interrupted somewhere about his 18th verse, subsided into offended silence.

“Monsieur Mueller is requested to favor the honorable society with a song,” cried the President, as soon as the tumult had somewhat subsided.

My red-capped neighbor, answering to that name, begged to be excused, on the score of having pledged his ut de poitrine a week since at the Mont de Piete, without yet having been able to redeem it.  This apology was received with laughter, hisses, and general incredulity.