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Since the publication of the first volume of the "Memoirs of a Bourgeois of Paris," by Dr. Véron, a bourgeois of the opposition has published the memoirs of one Bilboquet, wherein the means by which wealth and station among the redoubtable Bourgeoisie of Paris are to be obtained are amusingly unfolded, and the steps to fame and repute actually cut from the feet of some imaginary pretender.
Who am I? You know. O Athenians of the Rue Saint Martin and the Boulevart de Gand! Twenty times, seeing me pass by, my paunch in front and my neck buried in its kerchief, you have turned round to contemplate me.
It is Bilboquet, you said to yourselves, the great Bilboquet, our Bilboquet, who has carried off all the rings in the great tilting-match of life. He has fathomed all depths, solved all problems, answered all questions, broke all the great drums. The "Behind Scenes" of all things are familiar to him; the behind scenes of science and literature, of the stock-exchange, of the Bréda, and politics, of the Funambules, and pharmacy.
Daring, seeking, inventing, conquering, be has with unnerved hand torn away the veil that hid the statue of Isis. Witty as Voltaire, learned as D'Alembert, handsome as Helvetius, encyclopedic as Diderot, eloquent as Lamartine, lyrical as Hugo, skilful as Bosco, he has had a finger in every pie, and has conjured away all the best tricks.
What has he not done, this man who has ridden through all the storms of existence upright on the top of a wave like the giant Adamastor? Since for now some forty long years we have seen him driving the car of fortune over the Olympic arena, he has certainly run against more than one obstacle, and has experienced some tremendous falls, but with what wonderful agility has he not risen to his feet again!
Fallen as a clown, he rose up again as a doctor; disgusted with Hippocrates, he threw himself into the arms of Terpsichore, to be again thrown between the legs of corpulent Plutus; and, long live life! one defeat has ever led him on to two victories. If he fails with water to make razors cut, he finds in a Pectoral Paste hundreds of bank-notes, and the esteem of apothecaries, (S'il échoue avec l'eau pour faire couper les rasoirs, il trouve dans une pâte pectorale des billets de mille et l'estime des apothicaires.)
Formerly director of an open-air exhibition, chief performer on the great drum, with an accompaniment of symbols, founder or the Casquette de Paris, editor of the Conservative paper the Monumental, and officer of the order of the Golden Spur, he has directed all things, founded all things, administered all things, edited and manipulated all things.
As the habitué according to his own account, of all the leading cafés and restaurants of Paris, as collecting there the news of the day, seeking for new and original acquaintances, studying literature, art, and politics in their more accessible moods, and finally as himself proprietor, among his innumerable schemes and projects, of the Café Véron, and interested in consequence in the prosperity and success of one of the greatest spécialités, one of, unquestionably, the most distinctive features of the French capital. Dr. Véron gives in his second volume a very interesting account of the origin of the chief of these establishments, of the circumstances which brought them into repute or notoriety, of the leading cha-
- ↑ L Mémoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris. Par Le Docteur L. Véron. Tome Deuxième. II. Mémoires de Bilboquet recueillis par un Bourgeois de Paris.
