the review, and I turned back and recrossed the river, to seek the Rue du Fouarre and the Widow Jupille.
Now the Rue du Fouarre, though once a very famous thoroughfare, is to-day perhaps as squalid as any that drains its refuse by a single gutter into the Seine, and the widow had been no beauty even in the days when she followed the 106th of the line as vivandière and before she wedded Sergeant Jupille of that regiment. But she and I had struck up a friendship over a flesh wound which I received in an affair of outposts on the Algueda, and thenceforward I taught myself to soften the edge of her white wine by the remembered virtues of her ointment, so that when Sergeant Jupille was cut off by a grape-shot in front of Salamanca, and his Philomène retired to take charge of his mother's wine-shop in the Rue du Fouarre, she had enrolled my name high on the list of her prospective patrons. I felt myself, so to speak, a part in the goodwill of her house, and "Heaven knows," thought I, as I threaded the insalubrious street, "it is something for a soldier of the Empire to count even on this much in Paris to-day. Est aliquid, quocunque loco, quocunque sacello. . . ."
Madame Jupille knew me at once, and we fell (figuratively speaking) upon each others neck. Her shop was empty, the whole quarter had trooped off to the review. After mingling our tears (again figuratively) over the fickleness of the capital, I enquired if she had any letters for me.
"Why, no, comrade."
"None?" I exclaimed with a very blank face.
"Not one"; Madame Jupille eyed me archly, and relented, "the reason being that Mademoiselle is too discreet."
"Ah!" I heaved a big sigh of relief. "You provoking woman, tell me what you mean by that?"
