CHAPTER X.A BUDDING POET.
It is the first of May, and the lilacs in the Luxembourg Gardens are in blossom.

It has just struck four o'clock.

The bright sun and the pure sky have rendered more odious than ever the captivity of the office to Amedee, and he departs before the end of the sitting for a stroll in the Medicis garden around the pond, where, for the amusement of the children in that quarter, a little breeze from the northeast is pushing on a miniature flotilla.

Suddenly he hears himself called by a voice which bursts out like a brass band at a country fair.
"Good-day, Violette." It is Jocquelet, the future comedian, with his turned-up nose, which cuts the air like the prow of a first-class ironclad, superb, triumphant, dressed like a Brazilian, shaved to the quick, the dearest hope of Regnier's class at the Conservatoire-Jocquelet, who has made an enormous success in an act from the "Precieuses," at the last quarter's examination--he says so himself, without any useless modesty--Jocquelet, who will certainly have the first comedy prize at the next examination, and will make his debut with out delay at the Comedie Francaise! All this he announces in one breath, like a speech learned by heart, with his terrible voice, like a quack selling shaving-paste from a gilded carriage.

In two minutes that favorite word of theatrical people had been repeated thirty times, punctuating the phrases: "I! I! I! I!" Amedee is only half pleased at the meeting.