Boast of your acquaintance with the sanctum, and not one in ten thousand can dispute it with you.

Have you read Monsieur de C--'s pamphlet ?" "Really," said I, "I have been so busy." "Ah, mon ami!" cried Vincent, "the greatest sign of an idle man is to complain of being busy.

But you have had a loss: the pamphlet is good.
C--, by the way, has an extraordinary, though not an expanded mind; it is like a citizen's garden near London: a pretty parterre here, and a Chinese pagoda there; an oak tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed in the other.

You may traverse the whole in a stride; it is the four quarters of the globe in a mole-hill.

Yet every thing is good in its kind; and is neither without elegance nor design in its arrangement." "What do you think," said I, "of the Baron de--, the minister of-- ?" "Of him!" replied Vincent-- "'His soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.'" "It is dark and bewildered--full of dim visions of the ancient regime;--it is a bat hovering about the chambers of an old ruin.