tried upon him, called the "five senses." For that of hearing he was
made to listen to a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed to be the
bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made to feel by turns a live fish,
a hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. The last he took for a pack
of toothpicks, and announced gravely, "It sticks me." The laughs broke
out from all sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.

Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of that
fatal honeycomb!

[Illustration: THE TRAVELER'S REST.]

They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or other,
and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion the
wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was to
follow, and the semicircle of purple faces was quite blackening with
bottled laughter, when Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour
for departure was come, and I had not a minute to spare.

[Illustration: PALACE AT STRASBURG.]

Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph: as
we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the voices
exclaim in concert, "It is the Pure Illumination!"

Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were perfectly
Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast establishments,
where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward from the wine in
store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and dismiss him as an
Anacreon.