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The Parisian sometimes boasts of his native eccentricities, but it will infallibly be found that when he wants to depict an excessive case he selects an Englishman for his type. The above is by no means the only instance of Dr. Véron's national failing that way.

The bourgeois physiologist distinguishes between what he calls ivrognes (sots?) and soûlards (drunkards?). This amiable couple, who disdained even Paris for the slopes of the Dordogne, were soûlards, not ivrognes. But he says he has known many soûlards, chiefly jeunes grands seigneurs ("his friends," says the memorialist of Bilboquet, "are always the most distinguished men and women of his time"), who got brutalised upon brandy or absinthe. Those who get drunk upon absinthe attain a pitch of folly so singularly developed, that it is known as the folly of the Absinthiers. One of these unfortunates used to say: "I never taste what I eat, I only taste what I drink." "During my directorship of the Opera," says Dr. Véron, "I was intimate with one of these drunken young lords. He used to give the same orders to seven or eight hackney carriages, so that he should be accompanied by seven or eight vehicles to a pot-house outside the barrière, where he would pass the night in drinking brandy and brutalising himself amidst drunken companions."

The doctor goes on to remark, that drunkenness is not merely a vice, it is also a disease, and a change of habits cannot be suddenly brought