At Home in Paris Author:Blanchard Jerrold Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE OBSERVATIONS OF MONSIEUR CHOSE. Monsieur Chose's Last Bite. " You have a bite, Monsieur Chose." Monsieur Chose had rested his rod upon the parapet o... more »f the quay ; and was in conversation with Father Asticot. A remarkable couple. Monsieur Chose was a barrel planted upon two lively little legs that paddled gallantly under their weight, a well-fed, perhaps over-fed, man, with an eye that twinkled merrily to the music of a corkscrew. His hands were so fat, it was with difficulty he put the bait upon his hook, and he was often obliged to Father Asticot's fingers for helping him. Father Asticot was a tall lean man, with a ragged, drooping, grey moustache, a weary eye and wrinkled face ; and his clothes proclaimed the fallen, needy man. His sabots clattered upon the quay, and the anglersturned to laugh at his thin shanks covered with blue patched trousers, and the green coat he had worn, his customers said, in their pleasant way, since he was a little boy. " The pot-au-feu boils," said Father Asticot, while he measured a handsome handful of lively bait to his old customer. " There are beauties for you. With that you will take fish as fast as you can pull them out. Yes, the saucepan boils, the scum is rising. They will come and take your rod out of your hands, perhaps the watch out of your pocket—for you are the bourgeois of their detestation. They will empty your purse, you will find them between your sheets, and then your turn to sell these little beauties will come." While Father Asticot spoke he surveyed his lively store of bait, and turned it over, with the air of an artist who was satisfied with himself. "Ah! Bah! old grumbler!" replied Monsieur Chose. " Let them come—your rascals. We shall not give them the trouble of going home again to their boozing kens. A...« less