If Mueller had not a sou, I, at all events, had now only one Napoleon; so the Cafe Procope carried the day.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE RUE DE L'ANCIENNE COMEDIE AND THE CAFE PROCOPE.

The Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie are one and the same. As the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres, it dates back to somewhere about the reign of Philippe Auguste; and as the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie it takes its name and fame from the year 1689, when the old Theatre Francais was opened on the 18th of April by the company known as Moliere's troupe—Moliere being then dead, and Lully having succeeded him at the Theatre du Palais Royal.

In the same year, 1689, one Francois Procope, a Sicilian, conceived the happy idea of hiring a house just opposite the new theatre, and there opening a public refreshment-room, which at once became famous, not only for the excellence of its coffee (then newly introduced into France), but also for being the favorite resort of all the wits, dramatists, and beaux of that brilliant time. Here the latest epigrams were circulated, the newest scandals discussed, the bitterest literary cabals set on foot. Here Jean Jacques brooded over his chocolate; and Voltaire drank his mixed with coffee; and Dorat wrote his love-letters to Mademoiselle Saunier; and Marmontel wrote praises of Mademoiselle Clairon; and the Marquis de Bievre made puns innumerable; and Duclos and Mercier wrote satires, now almost forgotten; and Piron recited those verses which are at once his shame and his fame; and the Chevalier de St. Georges gave fencing lessons to his literary friends; and Lamothe, Freron, D'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, and all that wonderful company of wits, philosophers, encyclopaedists, and poets, that lit up as with a dying glory the last decades of the old regime, met daily, nightly, to write, to recite, to squabble, to lampoon, and some times to fight.

The year 1770 beheld, in the closing of the Theatre Francais, the extinction of a great power in the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres—for it was not, in fact, till the theatre was no more a theatre that the street changed its name, and became the Rue de L'Ancienne Comedie. A new house (to be on first opening invested with the time-honored title of Theatre Francais, but afterwards to be known as the Odeon) was now in progress of erection in the close neighborhood of the Luxembourg. The actors, meanwhile, repaired to the little theatre of the Tuilleries. At length, in 1782,[2] the Rue de L'Ancienne Comedie was one evening awakened from its two years' lethargy by the echo of many footfalls, the glare of many flambeaux, and the rattle of many wheels; for all Paris, all the wits and critics of the Cafe Procope, all the fair shepherdesses and all the beaux seigneurs of the court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI., were hastening on foot, in chairs, and in chariots, to the opening of the new house and the performance of a new play! And what a play! Surely, not to consider it too curiously, a play which struck, however sportively, the key-note of the coming Revolution;—a play which, for the first time, displayed society literally in a state of bouleversement;—a play in which the greed of the courtier, the venality of the judge, the empty glitter of the crown, were openly held up to scorn;—a play in which all the wit, audacity, and success are on the side of the canaille;—a play in which a lady's-maid is the heroine, and a valet canes his master, and a great nobleman is tricked, outwitted, and covered with ridicule!

[2] 1782 is the date given by M. Hippolyte Lucas. Sainte-Beuve places it two years later.

This play, produced for the first time under the title of La Folle Journee, was written by one Caron de Beaumarchais—a man of wit, a man of letters, a man of the people, a man of nothing—and was destined to achieve immortality under its later title of Le Mariage de Figaro.

A few years later, and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie echoed daily and nightly to the dull rumble of Revolutionary tumbrils, and the heavy tramp of Revolutionary mobs. Danton and Camille Desmoulins must have passed through it habitually on their way to the Revolutionary Tribunal. Charlotte Corday (and this is a matter of history) did pass through it that bright July evening, 1793, on her way to a certain gloomy house still to be seen in the adjoining Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, where she stabbed Marat in his bath.

But throughout every vicissitude of time and politics, though fashion deserted the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, and actors migrated, and fresh generations of wits and philosophers succeeded each other, the Cafe Procope still held its ground and maintained its ancient reputation. The theatre (closed in less than a century) became the studio first of Gros and then of Gerard, and was finally occupied by a succession of restaurateurs but the Cafe Procope remained the Cafe Procope, and is the Cafe Procope to this day.

The old street and all belonging to it—especially and peculiarly the Cafe Procope—-was of the choicest Quartier Latin flavor in the time of which I write; in the pleasant, careless, impecunious days of my youth. A cheap and highly popular restaurateur named Pinson rented the old theatre. A costumier hung out wigs, and masks, and debardeur garments next door to the restaurateur. Where the fatal tumbril used to labor past, the frequent omnibus now rattled gayly by; and the pavements trodden of old by Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, and Charlotte Corday, were thronged by a merry tide of students and grisettes. Meanwhile the Cafe Procope, though no longer the resort of great wits and famous philosophers, received within its hospitable doors, and nourished with its indifferent refreshments, many a now celebrated author, painter, barrister, and statesman. It was the general rendezvous for students of all kinds—poets of the Ecole de Droit, philosophers of the Ecole de Medecine, critics of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It must however be admitted that the poetry and criticism of these future great men was somewhat too liberally perfumed with tobacco, and that into their systems of philosophy there entered a considerable element of grisette.

Such, at the time of my first introduction to it, was the famous Cafe Procope.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BREAKFAST.

"Now this, mon cher," said Mueller, taking off his hat with a flourish to the young lady at the comptoir, "is the immortal Cafe Procope."

I looked round, and found myself in a dingy, ordinary sort of Cafe, in no wise differing from any other dingy, ordinary sort of Cafe in that part of Paris. The decorations were ugly enough to be modern. The ceiling was as black with gas-fumes and tobacco smoke as any other ceiling in any other estaminet in the Quartier Latin. The waiters looked as waiters always look before midday—sleepy, discontented, and unwashed. A few young men of the regular student type were scattered about here and there at various tables, reading, smoking, chatting, breakfasting, and reading the morning papers. In an alcove at the upper end of the second room (for there were two, one opening from the other) stood a blackened, broken-nosed, plaster bust of Voltaire, upon the summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a particularly rakish-looking hat. Just in front of this alcove and below the bust stood a marble-topped table, at one end of which two young men were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the matutinal absinthe.

"And this," said Mueller, with another flourish, "is the still more immortal table of the still more supremely immortal Voltaire. Here he was wont to rest his sublime elbows and sip his demi-tasse. Here, upon this very table, he wrote that famous letter to Marie Antoinette that Freron stole, and in revenge for which he wrote the comedy called l'Ecossaise; but of this admirable satire you English, who only know Voltaire in his Henriade and his history of Charles the Twelfth, have probably never heard till this moment! Eh bien! I'm not much wiser than you—so never mind. I'll be hanged if I've ever read a line of it. Anyhow, here is the table, and at this other end of it we'll have our breakfast."

It was a large, old-fashioned, Louis Quatorze piece of furniture, the top of which, formed from a single slab of some kind of gray and yellow marble, was stained all over with the coffee, wine, and ink-splashes of many generations of customers. It looked as old—nay, older—than the house itself.

The young men who were playing at dominoes looked up and nodded, as three or four others had done in the outer room when we passed through.

"Bonjour, l'ami," said the one who seemed to be winning. "Hast thou chanced to see anything of Martial, coming along!"

"I observed a nose defiling round the corner of the Rue de Bussy," replied Mueller, "and it looked as if Martial might be somewhere in the far distance, but I didn't wait to see. Are you expecting him?"

"Confound him—yes! We've been waiting more than half an hour."

"If you have invited him to breakfast," said Mueller, "he is sure to come."

"On the contrary, he has invited us to breakfast."

"Ah, that alters the case," said Mueller, philosophically. "Then he is sure not to come." "Garcon!"

A bullet-headed, short-jacketed, long-aproned waiter, who looked as if he had not been to bed since his early youth, answered the summons,

"M'sieur!"

"What have you that you can especially recommend this morning?"

The waiter, with that nasal volubility peculiar to his race, rapidly ran over the whole vegetable and animal creation.

Mueller listened with polite incredulity.

"Nothing else?" said he, when the other stopped, apparently from want of breath.

"Mais oui, M'sieur!" and, thus stimulated, the waiter, having "exhausted worlds and then imagined new," launched forth into a second and still more impossible catalogue.

Mueller turned to me.

"The resources of this establishment, you observe," he said, very gravely, "are inexhaustible. One might have a Roc's egg a la Sindbad for the asking."

The waiter looked puzzled, shuffled his slippered feet, and murmured something about "oeufs sur le plat."

"Unfortunately, however," continued Mueller, "we are but men—not fortresses provisioning for a siege. Antoine, mon enfant, we know thee to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent; but we will be content with a vol-au-vent of fish, a bifteck aux pommes frites, an omelette sucree, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux with the yellow seal. Now vanish!"

The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished accordingly.

Meanwhile more students had come in, and more kept coming. Hats and caps cropped up rapidly wherever there were pegs to hang them on, and the talking became fast and furious.

I soon found that everybody knew everybody at the Cafe Procope, and that the specialty of the establishment was dominoes—just as the specialty of the Cafe de la Regence is chess. There were games going on before long at almost every table, and groups of lookers-on gathered about those who enjoyed the reputation of being skilful players.

Gradually breakfast after breakfast emerged from some mysterious nether world known only to the waiters, and the war of dominoes languished.

"These are all students, of course," I said presently, "and yet, though I meet a couple of hundred fellows at our hospital lectures, I don't see a face I know."

"You would find some by this time, I dare say, in the other room," replied Mueller. "I brought you in here that you might sit at Voltaire's table, and eat your steak under the shadow of Voltaire's bust; but this salon is chiefly frequented by law-students—the other by medical and art students. Your place, mon cher, as well as mine, is in the outer sanctuary."

"That infernal Martial!" groaned one of the domino-players at the other end of the table. "So ends the seventh game, and here we are still. Parbleu! Horace, hasn't that absinthe given you an inconvenient amount of appetite?"

"Alas! my friend—don't mention it. And when the absinthe is paid for, I haven't a sou."

"My own case precisely. What's to be done?"

"Done!" echoed Horace, pathetically. "Shade of Apicius! inspire me...but, no—he's not listening."

"Hold! I have it. We'll make our wills in one another's favor, and die."

"I should prefer to die when the wind is due East, and the moon at the full," said Horace, contemplatively.

"True—besides, there is still la mere Gaudissart. Her cutlets are tough, but her heart is tender. She would not surely refuse to add one more breakfast to the score!"

Horace shook his head with an air of great despondency.

"There was but one Job," said he, "and he has been dead some time. The patience of la mere Gaudissart has long since been entirely exhausted."

"I am not so sure of that. One might appeal to her feelings, you know—have a presentiment of early death—wipe away a tear... Bah! it is worth the effort, anyhow."

"It is a forlorn hope, my dear fellow, but, as you say, it is worth the effort. Allons donc! to the storming of la mere Gaudissart!"

And with this they pushed aside the dominoes, took down their hats, nodded to Mueller, and went out.

"There go two of the brightest fellows and most improvident scamps in the whole Quartier," said my companion. "They are both studying for the bar; both under age; both younger sons of good families; and both destined, if I am not much mistaken, to rise to eminence by-and-by. Horace writes for Figaro and the Petit Journal pour Rire—Theophile does feuilleton work—romances, chit-chat, and political squibs—rubbish, of course; but clever rubbish, and wonderful when one considers what boys they both are, and what dissipated lives they lead. The amount of impecuniosity those fellows get through in the course of a term is something inconceivable. They have often only one decent suit between them—and sometimes not that. To-day, you see, they are at their wits' end for a breakfast. They have run their credit dry at Procope and everywhere else, and are gone now to a miserable little den in the Rue du Paon, kept by a fat good-natured old soul called la mere Gaudissart. She will perhaps take compassion on their youth and inexperience, and let them have six sous worth of horsebeef soup, stale bread, and the day before yesterday's vegetables. Nay, don't look so pitiful! We poor devils of the Student Quartier hug our Bohemian life, and exalt it above every other. When we have money, we cannot find windows enough out of which to fling it—when we have none, we start upon la chasse au diner, and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. We revel in the extremes of fasting and feasting, and scarcely know which we prefer."

"I think your friends Horace and Theophile are tolerably clear as to which they prefer," I remarked, with a smile.

"Bah! they would die of ennui if they had always enough to eat! Think how it sharpens a man's wits if—given the time, the place, and the appetite—he has every day to find the credit for his dinners! Show me a mathematical problem to compare with it as a popular educator of youth!"

"But for young men of genius, like Horace and Theophile..."

"Make yourself quite easy, mon cher. A little privation will do them no kind of harm. They belong to that class of whom it has been said that 'they would borrow money from Harpagon, and find truffles on the raft of the Medusa.' But hold! we are at the end of our breakfast. What say you? Shall we take our demi-tasse in the next room, among our fellow-students of physic and the fine arts?"



CHAPTER XXX.

A MAN WITH A HISTORY.

The society of the outer salon differed essentially from the society of the inner salon at the Cafe Procope. It was noisier—it was shabbier—it was smokier. The conversation in the inner salon was of a general character on the whole, and, as one caught sentences of it here and there, seemed for the most part to relate to the literature and news of the day—to the last important paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, to the new drama at the Odeon, or to the article on foreign politics in the Journal des Debats. But in the outer salon the talk was to the last degree shoppy, and overflowed with the argot of the studios. Some few medical students were clustered, it is true, in a corner near the door; but they were so outnumbered by the artists at the upper end of the room, that these latter seemed to hold complete possession, and behaved more like the members of a recognised club than the casual customers of a cafe. They talked from table to table. They called the waiters by their Christian names. They swaggered up and down the middle of the room with their hats on their heads, their hands in their pockets, and their pipes in their mouths, as coolly as if it were the broad walk of the Luxembourg gardens.

And the appearance of these gentlemen was not less remarkable than their deportment. Their hair, their beards, their clothes, were of the wildest devising. They seemed one and all to have started from a central idea, that central idea being to look as unlike their fellow-men as possible; and thence to have diverged into a variety that was nothing short of infinite. Each man had evidently modelled himself upon his own ideal, and no two ideals were alike. Some were picturesque, some were grotesque; and some, it must be admitted, were rather dirty ideals, into the realization of which no such paltry considerations as those of soap, water, or brushes were permitted to enter.

Here, for instance, were Roundhead crops and flowing locks of Cavalier redundancy—steeple-crowned hats, and Roman cloaks draped bandit-fashion—moustachios frizzed and brushed up the wrong way in the style of Louis XIV.—pointed beards and slouched hats, after the manner of Vandyke—-patriarchal beards a la Barbarossa—open collars, smooth chins, and long undulating locks of the Raffaelle type—coats, blouses, paletots of inconceivable cut, and all kinds of unusual colors—in a word, every eccentricity of clothing, short of fancy costume, in which it was practicable for men of the nineteenth century to walk abroad and meet the light of day.

We had no sooner entered this salon, taken possession of a vacant table, and called for coffee, than my companion was beset by a storm of greetings.

"Hola! Mueller, where hast thou been hiding these last few centuries, mon gaillard?"

"Tiens! Mueller risen from the dead!"

"What news from la bas, old fellow?"

To all which ingenious pleasantries my companion replied in kind—introducing me at the same time to two or three of the nearest speakers. One of these, a dark young man got up in the style of a Byzantine Christ, with straight hair parted down the middle, a bifurcated beard, and a bare throat, was called Eugene Droz. Another—big, burly, warm-complexioned, with bright open blue eyes, curling reddish beard and moustache, slouched hat, black velvet blouse, immaculate linen, and an abundance of rings, chains, and ornaments—was made up in excellent imitation of the well-known portrait of Rubens. This gentleman's name, as I presently learned, was Caesar de Lepany.

When we came in, these two young men, Droz and De Lepany, were discussing, in enthusiastic but somewhat unintelligible language, the merits of a certain Monsieur Lemonnier, of whom, although till that moment ignorant of his name and fame, I at once perceived that he must be some celebrated chef de cuisine.

"He will never surpass that last thing of his," said the Byzantine youth. "Heavens! How smooth it is! How buttery! How pulpy!"

"Ay—and yet with all that lusciousness of quality, he never wants piquancy," added De Lepany.

"I think his greens are apt to be a little raw," interposed Mueller, taking part in the conversation.

"Raw!" echoed the first speaker, indignantly. "Eh, mon Dieu! What can you be thinking of! They are almost too hot!"

"But they were not so always, Eugene," said he of the Rubens make-up, with an air of reluctant candor. "It must be admitted that Lemonnier's greens used formerly to be a trifle—just a trifle—raw. Evidently Monsieur Mueller does not know how much he has taken to warming them up of late. Even now, perhaps, his olives are a little cold."

"But then, how juicy his oranges are!" exclaimed young Byzantine.

"True—and when you remember that he never washes—!"

"Ah, sacredie! yes—there is the marvel!"

And Monsieur Eugene Droz held up his hands and eyes with all the reverent admiration of a true believer for a particularly dirty dervish.

"Who, in Heaven's name, is this unclean individual who used to like his vegetables underdone, and never washes?" whispered I in Mueller's ear.

"What—Lemonnier! You don't mean to say you never heard of Lemonnier?"

"Never, till now. Is he a cook?"

Mueller gave me a dig in the ribs that took my breath away.

"Goguenard!" said he. "Lemonnier's an artist—the foremost man of the water-color school. But I wouldn't be too funny if I were you. Suppose you were to burst your jocular vein—there'd be a catastrophe!"

Meanwhile the conversation of Messieurs Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush.

"Queroulet!" said Lepany, with a contemptuous flourish of his pipe. "Who spoke of Queroulet? Bah!—a miserable plodder, destitute of ideality—a fellow who paints only what he sees, and sees only what is commonplace—a dull, narrow-souled, unimaginative handicraftsman, to whom a tree is just a tree; and a man, a man; and a straw, a straw, and nothing more!"

"That's a very low-souled view to take of art, no doubt," croaked in a grating treble voice the youth with the club-foot; "but if trees and men and straws are not exactly trees and men and straws, and are not to be represented as trees and men and straws, may I inquire what else they are, and how they are to be pictorially treated?"

"They must be ideally treated, Monsieur Valentin," replied Lepany, majestically.

"No doubt; but what will they be like when they are ideally treated? Will they still, to the vulgar eye, be recognisable for trees and men and straws?"

"I should scarcely have supposed that Monsieur Valentin would jest upon such a subject as a canon of the art he professes," said Lepany, becoming more and more dignified.

"I am not jesting," croaked Monsieur Valentin; "but when I hear men of your school talk so much about the Ideal, I (as a realist) always want to know what they themselves understand by the phrase."

"Are you asking me for my definition of the Ideal, Monsieur Valentin?"

"Well, if it's not giving you too much trouble—yes."

Lepany, who evidently relished every chance of showing off, fell into a picturesque attitude and prepared to hold forth. Valentin winked at one or two of his own clique, and lit a cigar.

"You ask me," began Lepany, "to define the Ideal—in other words, to define the indefinite, which alas! whether from a metaphysical, a philosophical, or an aesthetic point of view, is a task transcending immeasurably my circumscribed powers of expression."

"Gracious heavens!" whispered Mueller in my ear. "He must have been reared from infancy on words of five syllables!"

"What shall I say?" pursued Lepany. "Shall I say that the Ideal is, as it were, the Real distilled and sublimated in the alembic of the imagination? Shall I say that the Ideal is an image projected by the soul of genius upon the background of the universe? That it is that dazzling, that unimaginable, that incommunicable goal towards which the suns in their orbits, the stars in their courses, the spheres with all their harmonies, have been chaotically tending since time began! Ideal, say you? Call it ideal, soul, mind, matter, art, eternity,... what are they all but words? What are words but the weak strivings of the fettered soul that fain would soar to those empyrean heights where Truth, and Art, and Beauty are one and indivisible? Shall I say all this..."

"My dear fellow, you have said it already—you needn't say it again," interrupted Valentin.

"Ay; but having said it—having expressed myself, perchance with some obscurity...."

"With the obscurity of Erebus!" said, very deliberately, a fat student in a blouse.

"Monsieur!" exclaimed De Lepany, measuring the length and breadth of the fat student with a glance of withering scorn.

The Byzantine was no less indignant.

"Don't heed them, mon ami!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Thy definition is sublime-eloquent!"

"Nay," said Valentin, "we concede that Monsieur de Lepany is sublime; we recognise with admiration that he is eloquent; but we submit that he is wholly unintelligible."

And having delivered this parting shot, the club-footed realist slipped his arm through the arm of the fat student, and went off to a distant table and a game at dominoes.

Then followed an outburst of offended idealism. His own clique crowded round Lepany as the champion of their school. They shook hands with him. They embraced him. They fooled him to the top of his bent. Presently, being not only as good-natured as he was conceited, but (rare phenomenon in the Quartier Latin!) a rich fellow into the bargain, De Lepany called for champagne and treated his admirers all around.

In the midst of the chatter and bustle which this incident occasioned, a pale, earnest-looking man of about five-and-thirty, coming past our table on his way out of the Cafe, touched Mueller on the arm, bent down, and said quietly:—

"Mueller, will you do me a favor!"

"A hundred, Monsieur," replied my companion; half rising, and with an air of unusual respect and alacrity.

"Thanks, one will be enough. Do you see that man yonder, sitting alone in the corner, with his back to the light?"

"I do."

"Good—don't look at him again, for fear of attracting his attention. I have been trying for the last half hour to get a sketch of his head, but I think he suspected me. Anyhow he moved so often, and so hid his face with his hands and the newspaper, that I was completely baffled. Now it is a remarkable head—just the head I have been wanting for my Marshal Romero—and if, with your rapid pencil and your skill in seizing expression, you could manage this for me...."

"I will do my best," said Mueller.

"A thousand thanks. I will go now; for when I am gone he will be off his guard. You will find me in the den up to three o'clock. Adieu."

Saying which, the stranger passed on, and went out.

"That's Flandrin!" said Mueller.

"Really?" I said. "Flandrin! And you know him?"

But in truth I only answered thus to cover my own ignorance; for I knew little at that time of modern French art, and I had never even heard the name of Flandrin before.

"Know him!" echoed Mueller. "I should think so. Why, I worked in his studio for nearly two years."

And then he explained to me that this great painter (great even then, though as yet appreciated only in certain choice Parisian circles, and not known out of France) was at work upon a grand historical subject connected with the Spanish persecutions in the Netherlands—the execution of Egmont and Horn, in short, in the great square before the Hotel de Ville in Brussels.

"But the main point now," said Mueller, "is to get the sketch—and how? Confound the fellow! while he keeps his back to the light and his head down like that, the thing is impossible. Anyhow I can't do it without an accomplice. You must help me."

"I! What can I do?"

"Go and sit near him—speak to him—make him look up—keep him, if possible, for a few minutes in conversation—nothing easier."

"Nothing easier, perhaps, if I were you; but, being only myself, few things more difficult!"

"Nevertheless, my dear boy, you must try, and at once. Hey —presto!—away!"

Placed where we were, the stranger was not likely to have observed us; for we had come into the room from behind the corner in which he was sitting, and had taken our places at a table which he could not have seen without shifting his own position. So, thus peremptorily commanded, I rose; slipped quietly back into the inner salon, made a pretext of looking at the clock over the door; and came out again, as if alone and looking for a vacant seat.

The table at which he had placed himself was very small—only just big enough to stand in a corner and hold a plate and a coffee-cup; but it was supposed to be large enough for two, and there were evidently two chairs belonging to it. On one of these, being alone, the stranger had placed his overcoat and a small black bag. I at once saw and seized my opportunity.

"Pardon, Monsieur," I said, very civilly, "will you permit me to hang these things up?"

He looked up, frowned, and said abruptly:—

"Why, Monsieur?"

"That I may occupy this chair."

He glanced round; saw that there was really no other vacant; swept off the bag and coat with his own hands; hung them on a peg overhead; dropped back into his former attitude, and went on reading.

"I regret to have given you the trouble, Monsieur," I said, hoping to pave the way to a conversation.

But a little quick, impatient movement of the hand was his only reply. He did not even raise his head. He did not even lift his eyes from the paper.

I called for a demi-tasse and a cigar; then took out a note-book and pencil, assumed an air of profound abstraction, and affected to become absorbed in calculations.

In the meanwhile, I could not resist furtively observing the appearance of this man whom a great artist had selected as his model for one of the darkest characters of mediaeval history.

He was rather below than above the middle height; spare and sinewy; square in the shoulders and deep in the chest; with close-clipped hair and beard; grizzled moustache; high cheek-bones; stern impassive features, sharply cut; and deep-set restless eyes, quick and glancing as the eyes of a monkey. His face, throat, and hands were sunburnt to a deep copper-color, as if cast in bronze. His age might have been from forty-five to fifty. He wore a thread-bare frock-coat buttoned to the chin; a stiff black stock revealing no glimpse of shirt-collar; a well-worn hat pulled low over his eyes; and trousers of dark blue cloth, worn very white and shiny at the knees, and strapped tightly down over a pair of much-mended boots.

The more I looked at him, the less I was surprised that Flandrin should have been struck by his appearance. There was an air of stern poverty and iron resolution about the man that arrested one's attention at first sight. The words "ancien militaire" were written in every furrow of his face; in every seam and on every button of his shabby clothing. That he had seen service, missed promotion, suffered unmerited neglect (or, it might be, merited disgrace), seemed also not unlikely.

Watching him as he sat, half turned away, half hidden by the newspaper he was reading, one elbow resting on the table, one brown, sinewy hand supporting his chin and partly concealing his mouth, I told myself that here, at all events, was a man with a history—perhaps with a very dark history. What were the secrets of his past? What had he done? What had he endured? I would give much to know.

My coffee and cigar being brought, I asked for the Figaro, and holding the paper somewhat between the stranger and myself, watched him with increasing interest.

I now began to suspect that he was less interested in his own newspaper than he appeared to be, and that his profound abstraction, like my own, was assumed. An indefinable something in the turn of his head seemed to tell me that his attention was divided between whatever might be going forward in the room and what he was reading. I cannot describe what that something was; but it gave me the impression that he was always listening. When the outer door opened or shut, he stirred uneasily, and once or twice looked sharply round to see what new-comer entered the cafe. Was he anxiously expecting some one who did not come? Or was he dreading the appearance of some one whom he wished to avoid? Might he not be a political refugee? Might he not be a spy?

"There is nothing of interest in the papers to-day, Monsieur," said, making another effort to force him into conversation.

He affected not to hear me.

I drew my chair a little nearer, and repeated the observation.

He frowned impatiently, and without looking up, replied:—

"Eh, mon Dieu, Monsieur!—when there is a dearth of news!"

"There need not, even so, be a dearth of wit. Figaro is as heavy to-day as a government leader in the Moniteur."

He shrugged his shoulders and moved slightly round, apparently to get a better light upon what he was reading, but in reality to turn still more away from me. The gesture of avoidance was so marked, that with the best will in the world, it would have been impossible for me to address him again. I therefore relapsed into silence.

Presently I saw a sudden change flash over him.

Now, in turning away from myself, he had faced round towards a narrow looking-glass panel which reflected part of the opposite side of the room; and chancing, I suppose, to lift his eyes from the paper, he had seen something that arrested his attention. His head was still bent; but I could see that his eyes were riveted upon the mirror. There was alertness in the tightening of his hand before his mouth—in the suspension of his breathing.

Then he rose abruptly, brushed past me as if I were not there, and crossed to where Mueller, sketch-book in hand, was in the very act of taking his portrait.

I jumped up, almost involuntarily, and followed him. Mueller, with an unsuccessful effort to conceal his confusion, thrust the book into his pocket.

"Monsieur," said the stranger, in a low, resolute voice, "I protest against what you have been doing. You have no right to take my likeness without my permission."

"Pardon, Monsieur, I—I beg to assure you—" stammered Mueller.

"That you intended no offence? I am willing to suppose so. Give me up the sketch, and I am content."

"Give up the sketch!" echoed Mueller.

"Precisely, Monsieur."

"Nay—but if, as an artist, I have observed that which leads me to desire a—a memorandum—let us say of the pose and contour of a certain head," replied Mueller, recovering his self-possession, "it is not likely that I shall be disposed to part from my memorandum."

"How, Monsieur! you refuse?"

"I am infinitely sorry, but—"

"But you refuse?"

"I certainly cannot comply with Monsieur's request."

The stranger, for all his bronzing, grew pale with rage.

"Do not compel me, Monsieur, to say what I must think of your conduct, if you persist in this determination," he said fiercely.

Mueller smiled, but made no reply.

"You absolutely refuse to yield up the sketch?"

"Absolutely."

"Then, Monsieur, c'est une infamie—et vous etes un lache!"

But the last word had scarcely hissed past his lips before Mueller dashed his coffee dregs full in the stranger's face.

In one second, the table was upset—blows were exchanged—Mueller, pinned against the wall with his adversary's hands upon his throat, was striking out with the desperation of a man whose strength is overmatched—and the whole room was in a tumult.

In vain I attempted to fling myself between them. In vain the waiters rushed to and fro, imploring "ces Messieurs" to interpose. In vain a stout man pushed his way through the bystanders, exclaiming angrily:—

"Desist, Messieurs! Desist, in the name of the law! I am the proprietor of this establishment—I forbid this brawling—I will have you both arrested! Messieurs, do you hear?"

Suddenly the flush of rage faded out of Mueller's face. He gasped—became livid. Lepany, Droz, myself, and one or two others, flew at the stranger and dragged him forcibly back.

"Assassin!" I cried, "would you murder him?"

He flung us off, as a baited bull flings off a pack of curs. For myself, though I received only a backhanded blow on the chest, I staggered as if I had been struck with a sledgehammer.

Mueller, half-fainting, dropped into a chair.

There was a tramp and clatter at the door—a swaying and parting of the crowd.

"Here are the sergents de ville!" cried a trembling waiter.

"He attacked me first," gasped Mueller. "He has half strangled me."

"Qu'est ce que ca me fait!" shouted the enraged proprietor. "You are a couple of canaille! You have made a scandal in my Cafe. Sergents, arrest both these gentlemen!"

The police—there were two of them, with their big cocked hats on their heads and their long sabres by their sides—pushed through the circle of spectators. The first laid his hand on Mueller's shoulder; the second was about to lay his hand on mine, but I drew back.

"Which is the other?" said he, looking round.

"Sacredie!" stammered the proprietor, "he was here—there—not a moment ago!"

"Diable!" said the sergent de ville, stroking his moustache, and staring fiercely about him. "Did no one see him go?"

There was a chorus of exclamations—a rush to the inner salon—to the door—to the street. But the stranger was nowhere in sight; and, which was still more incomprehensible, no one had seen him go!

"Mais, mon Dieu!" exclaimed the proprietor, mopping his head and face violently with his pocket-handkerchief, "was the man a ghost, that he should vanish into the air?"

"Parbleu! a ghost with muscles of iron," said Mueller. "Talk of the strength of a madman—he has the strength of a whole lunatic asylum!"

"He gave me a most confounded blow in the ribs, anyhow!" said Lepany.

"And nearly broke my arm," added Eugene Droz.

"And has given me a pain in my chest for a week," said I, in chorus.

"If he wasn't a ghost," observed the fat student sententiously, "he must certainly be the devil."

The sergents de ville grinned.

"Do we, then, arrest this gentleman?" asked the taller and bigger of the two, his hand still upon my friend's shoulder.

But Mueller laughed and shook his head.

"What!" said he, "arrest a man for resisting the devil? Nonsense, mes amis, you ought to canonize me. What says Monsieur le proprietaire?"

Monsieur the proprietor smiled.

"I am willing to let the matter drop," he replied, "on the understanding that Monsieur Mueller was not really the first offender."

"Foi d'honneur! He insulted me—I threw some coffee in his face—he flung himself upon me like a tiger, and almost choked me, as all here witnessed. And for what? Because I did him the honor to make a rough pencilling of his ugly face ... Mille tonnerres!—the fellow has stolen my sketch-book!"



CHAPTER XXXI.

FANCIES ABOUT FACES.

The sketch-book was undoubtedly gone, and the stranger had undoubtedly taken it. How he took it, and how he vanished, remained a mystery.

The aspect of affairs, meanwhile, was materially changed. Mueller no longer stood in the position of a leniently-treated offender. He had become accuser, and plaintiff. A grave breach of the law had been committed, and he was the victim of a bold and skilful tour de main.

The police shook their heads, twirled their moustaches, and looked wise.

It was a case of premeditated assault—in short, of robbery with violence. It must be inquired into—reported, of course, at head-quarters, without loss of time. Would Monsieur be pleased to describe the stolen sketch-book? An oblong, green volume, secured by an elastic band; contains sketches in pencil and water-colors; value uncertain—Good. And the accused ... would Monsieur also be pleased to describe the person of the accused? His probable age, for instance; his height; the color of his hair, eyes, and beard? Good again. Lastly, Monsieur's own name and address, exactly and in full. Tres-bon. It might, perhaps, be necessary for Monsieur to enter a formal deposition to-morrow morning at the Prefecture of Police, in which case due notice would be given.

Whereupon he who seemed to be chief of the twain, having entered Mueller's replies in a greasy pocket-book of stupendous dimensions, which he seemed to wear like a cuirass under the breast of his uniform, proceeded to interrogate the proprietor and waiters.

Was the accused an habitual frequenter of the cafe?—No. Did they remember ever to have seen him there before?—No. Should they recognise him if they saw him again? To this question the answers were doubtful. One waiter thought he should recognise the man; another was not sure; and Monsieur the proprietor admitted that he had himself been too angry to observe anything or anybody very minutely.

Finally, having made themselves of as much importance and asked as many questions as possible, the sergents de ville condescended to accept a couple of-petits verres a-piece, and then, with much lifting of cocked hats and clattering of sabres, departed.

Most of the students had ere this dropped off by twos and threes, and were gone to their day's work, or pleasure—to return again in equal force about five in the afternoon. Of those that remained, some five or six came up when the police were gone, and began chatting about the robbery. When they learned that Flandrin had desired to have a sketch of the man's head; when Mueller described his features, and I his obstinate reserve and semi-military air, their excitement knew no bounds. Each had immediately his own conjecture to offer. He was a political spy, and therefore fearful lest his portrait should be recognised. He was a conspirator of the Fieschi school. He was Mazzini in person.

In the midst of the discussion, a sudden recollection flashed upon me.

"A clue! a clue!" I shouted triumphantly. "He left his coat and black bag hanging up in the corner!"

Followed by the others, I ran to the spot where I had been sitting before the affray began. But my exultation was shortlived. Coat and bag, like their owner, had disappeared.

Mueller thrust his hands into his pockets, shook his head, and whistled dismally.

"I shall never see my sketch-book again, parbleu!" said he. "The man who could not only take it out of my breast-pocket, but also in the very teeth of the police, secure his property and escape unseen, is a master of his profession. Our friends in the cocked hats have no chance against him."

"And Flandrin, who is expecting the sketch," said I; "what of him?"

Mueller shrugged his shoulders.

"Next to being beaten," growled he, "there's nothing I hate like confessing it. However, it has to be done—so the sooner the better. Would you like to come with me? You'll see his studio."

I was only too glad to accompany him; for to me, as to most of us, there was ever a nameless charm in the picturesque litter of an artist's studio. Mueller's own studio, however, was as yet the only one I had seen. He laughed when I said this.

"If your only notion of a studio is derived from that specimen," said he, "you will he agreeably surprised by the contrast. He calls his place a 'den,' but that's a metaphor. Mine is a howling wilderness."

Arriving presently at a large house at the bottom of a courtyard in the Rue Vaugirard, he knocked at a small side-door bearing a tiny brass plate not much larger than a visiting-card, on which was engraved—"Monsieur Flandrin."

The door opened by some invisible means from within, and we entered a passage dimly lighted by a painted glass door at the farther end. My companion led the way down this passage, through the door, and into a small garden containing some three or four old trees, a rustic seat, a sun-dial on an antique-looking fragment of a broken column, and a little weed-grown pond about the size of an ordinary drawing-room table, surrounded by artificial rock-work.

At the farther extremity of this garden, filling the whole space from wall to wall, and occupying as much ground as must have been equal to half the original enclosure, stood a large, new, windowless building, in shape exactly like a barn, lighted from a huge skylight in the roof, and entered by a small door in one corner. I did not need to be told that this was the studio.

But if the outside was like a barn, the inside was like a beautiful mediaeval interior by Cattermole—an interior abounding in rich and costly detail; in heavy crimson draperies, precious old Italian cabinets, damascened armor, carved chairs with upright backs and twisted legs, old paintings in massive Florentine frames, and strange quaint pieces of Elizabethan furniture, like buffets, with open shelves full of rare and artistic things—bronzes, ivory carvings, unwieldy Majolica jars, and lovely goblets of antique Venetian glass laced with spiral ornaments of blue and crimson and that dark emerald green of which the secret is now lost for ever.

Then, besides all these things, there were great folios leaning piled against the walls, one over the other; and Persian rugs of many colors lying here and there about the floor; and down in one corner I observed a heap of little models, useful, no doubt, as accessories in pictures—gondolas, frigates, foreign-looking carts, a tiny sedan chair, and the like.

But the main interest of the scene concentrated itself in the unfinished picture, the hired model (a brawny fellow in a close-fitting suit of black, leaning on a huge two-handed sword), and the artist in his holland blouse, with the palette and brushes in his hand.

It was a very large picture, and stood on a monster easel, somewhat towards the end of the studio. The light from above poured full upon the canvas, while beyond lay a background of shadow. Much of the subject was as yet only indicated, but enough was already there to tell the tragic story and display the power of the painter. There, high above the heads of the mounted guards and the assembled spectators, rose the scaffold, hung with black. Egmont, wearing a crimson tabard, a short black cloak embroidered with gold, and a hat ornamented with black and white plumes, stood in a haughty attitude, as if facing the square and the people. Two other figures, apparently of an ecclesiastic and a Spanish general, partly in outline, partly laid in with flat color, were placed to the right of the principal character. The headsman stood behind, leaning upon his sword. The slender spire of the Hotel de Ville, surmounted by its gilded archangel glittering in the morning sun, rose high against a sky of cloudless blue; while all around was seen the well-known square with its sculptured gables and decorated facades—every roof, window, and balcony crowded with spectators.

Unfinished though it was, I saw at once that I was brought face to face with what would some day be a famous work of art. The figures were grandly grouped; the heads were noble; the sky was full of air; the action of the whole scene informed with life and motion.

I stood admiring and silent, while Mueller told his tale, and Flandrin paused in his work to listen.

"It is horribly unlucky," said he. "I had not been able to find a portrait of Romero and, faute de mieux, have been trying for days past to invent the right sort of head for him—of course, without success. You never saw such a heap of failures! But as for that man at the cafe, if Providence had especially created him for my purpose, he could not have answered it better."

"I believe I am as sorry as you can possibly be," said Mueller.

"Then you are very sorry indeed," replied the painter; and he looked even more disappointment than he expressed.

"I'm afraid I can't do it," said Mueller, after a moment's silence; "but if you'll give me a pencil and a piece of paper, and credit me with the will in default of the deed, I will try to sketch the head from memory."

"Ah? if you can only do that! Here is a drawing block—choose what pencils you prefer—or here are crayons, if you like them better."

Mueller took the pencils and block, perched himself on the corner of a table, and began. Flandrin, breathless with expectation, looked over his shoulder. Even the model (in the grim character of Egmont's executioner) laid aside his two-handed sword, and came round for a peep.

"Bravo! that's just his nose and brow," said Flandrin, as Mueller's rapid hand flew over the paper. "Yes—the likeness comes with every touch ... and the eyes, so keen and furtive. ... Nay, that eyelid should be a little more depressed at the corner.... Yes, yes—just so. Admirable! There!—don't attempt to work it up. The least thing might mar the likeness. My dear fellow, what a service you have rendered me!"

"Quatre-vingt mille diables!" ejaculated the model, his eyes riveted upon the sketch.

Mueller laughed and looked.

"Tiens! Guichet," said he, "is that meant for a compliment?"

"Where did you see him?" asked the model, pointing down at the sketch.

"Why? Do you know him?"

"Where did you see him, I say?" repeated Guichet, impatiently.

He was a rough fellow, and garnished every other sentence with an oath; but he did not mean to be uncivil.

"At the Cafe Procope."

"When?"

"About an hour ago. But again, I repeat—do you know him?"

"Do I know him? Tonnerre de Dieu!"

"Then who and what is he?"

The model stroked his beard; shook his head; declined to answer.

"Bah!" said he, gloomily, "I may have seen him, or I may be mistaken. 'Tis not my affair."

"I suspect Guichet knows something against this interesting stranger," laughed Flandrin. "Come, Guichet, out with it! We are among friends."

But Guichet again looked at the drawing, and again shook his head.

"I'm no judge of pictures, messieurs," said he. "I'm only a poor devil of a model. How can I pretend to know a man from such a griffonage as that?"

And, taking up his big sword again, he retreated to his former post over against the picture. We all saw that he was resolved to say no more.

Flandrin, delighted with Mueller's sketch, put it, with many thanks and praises, carefully away in one of the great folios against the wall.

"You have no idea, mon cher Mueller," he said, "of what value it is to me. I was in despair about the thing till I saw that fellow this morning in the Cafe; and he looked as if he had stepped out of the Middle Ages on purpose for me. It is quite a mediaeval face—if you know what I mean by a mediaeval face."

"I think I do," said Mueller. "You mean that there was a moyen-age type, as there was a classical type, and as there is a modern type."

"Just so; and therein lies the main difficulty that we historical painters have to encounter. When we cannot find portraits of our characters, we are driven to invent faces for them—and who can invent what he never sees? Invention must be based on some kind of experience; and to study old portraits is not enough for our purpose, except we frankly make use of them as portraits. We cannot generalize upon them, so as to resuscitate a vanished type."

"But then has it really vanished?" said Mueller. "And how can we know for certain that the mediaeval type did actually differ from the type we see before us every day?"

"By simple and direct proof—by studying the epochs of portrait painting. Take Holbein's heads, for instance. Were not the people of his time grimmer, harder-visaged, altogether more unbeautiful than the people of ours? Take Petitot's and Sir Peter Lely's. Can you doubt that the characteristics of their period were entirely different? Do you suppose that either race would look as we look, if resuscitated and clothed in the fashion of to-day?"

"I am not at all sure that we should observe any difference," said Mueller, doubtfully.

"And I feel sure we should observe the greatest," replied Flandrin, striding up and down the studio, and speaking with great animation. "I believe, as regards the men and women of Holbein's time, that their faces were more lined than ours; their eyes, as a rule, smaller—their mouths wider—their eyebrows more scanty—their ears larger—their figures more ungainly. And in like manner, I believe the men and women of the seventeenth century to have been more fleshy than either Holbein's people or ourselves; to have had rounder cheeks, eyes more prominent and heavy-lidded, shorter noses, more prominent chins, and lips of a fuller and more voluptuous mould."

"Still we can't be certain how much of all this may be owing to the mere mannerisms of successive schools of art," urged Mueller, sticking manfully to his own opinion. "Where will you find a more decided mannerist than Holbein? And because he was the first portrait-painter of his day, was he not reproduced with all his faults of literalness and dryness by a legion of imitators? So with Sir Peter Lely, with Petitot, with Vandyck, with every great artist who painted kings and queens and court beauties. Then, again, a certain style of beauty becomes the rage, and-a skilful painter flatters each fair sitter in turn by bringing up her features, or her expression, or the color of her hair, as near as possible to the fashionable standard. And further, there is the dress of a period to be taken into account. Think of the family likeness that pervades the flowing wigs of the courts of Louis Quatorze and Charles the Second—see what powder did a hundred years ago to equalize mankind."

Flandrin shook his head.

"Ingenious, mon garcon" said he; "ingenious, but unsound The cut of a fair lady's bodice never yet altered the shape of her nose; neither was it the fashion of their furred surtouts that made Erasmus and Sir Thomas More as like as twins. What you call the 'mannerism' of Holbein is only his way of looking at his fellow-creatures. He and Sir Antonio More were the most faithful of portrait-painters. They didn't know how to flatter. They painted exactly what they saw—no more, and no less; so that every head they have left us is a chapter in the history of the Middle Ages. The race—depend on't—the race was unbeautiful; and not even the picturesque dress of the period (which, according to your theory, should have helped to make the wearers of it more attractive) could soften one jot of their plainness."

"I can't bring myself to believe that we were all so ugly—French, English, and Germans alike—only a couple of centuries ago," said Mueller.

"That is to say, you prefer to believe that Holbein, and Lucas Cranach, and Sir Antonio More, and all their school, were mannerists. Nonsense, my dear fellow—nonsense! It is Nature who is the mannerist. She loves to turn out a certain generation after a particular pattern; and when she is tired of that pattern, she invents another. Her fancies last, on the average about, a hundred years. Sometimes she changes the type quite abruptly; sometimes modifies it by gentle, yet always perceptible, degrees. And who shall say what her secret processes are? Education, travel, intermarriage with foreigners, the introduction of new kinds of food) the adoption of new habits, may each and all have something to do with these successive changes; but of one point at least we may be certain—and that is, that we painters are not responsible for her caprices. Our mission is to interpret Dame Nature more or less faithfully, according to our powers; but beyond interpretation we cannot go. And now (for you know I am as full of speculations as an experimental philosopher) I will tell you another conclusion I have come to with regard to this subject; and that is that national types were less distinctive in mediaeval times than in ours. The French, English, Flemish, and Dutch of the Middle Ages, as we see them in their portraits, are curiously alike in all outward characteristics. The courtiers of Francis the First and their (James, and the lords and ladies of the court of Henry the Eighth, resemble each other as people of one nation. Their features are, as it were, cast in one mould. So also with the courts of Louis Quatorze and Charles the Second. As for the regular French face of to-day, with its broad cheek-bones and high temples running far up into the hair on either side, that type does not make its appearance till close upon the advent of the Reign of Terror. But enough! I shall weary you with theories, and wear out the patience of our friend Guichet, who is sufficiently tired already with waiting for a head that never comes to be cut off as it ought. Adieu—adieu. Come soon again, and see how I get on with Marshal Romero."

Thus dismissed, we took our leave and left the painter to his work.

"An extraordinary man!" said Mueller, as we passed out again through the neglected garden and paused for a moment to look at some half-dozen fat gold and silver fish that were swimming lazily about the little pond. "A man made up of contradictions—abounding in energy, yet at the same time the dreamiest of speculators. An original thinker, too; but wanting that basis which alone makes original thinking of any permanent value."

"But," said I, "he is evidently an educated man."

"Yes—educated as most artists are educated; but Flandrin has as strong a bent for science as for art, and deserved something better. Five years at a German university would have made of him one of the most remarkable men of his time. What did you think of his theory of faces?"

"I know nothing of the subject, and cannot form a judgment; but it sounded as if it might be true."

"Yes—just that. It may be true, and it may not. If true, then for my own part I should like to pursue his theory a step further, and trace the operation of these secret processes by means of which I am, happily, such a much better-looking fellow than my great-great-great-great-grandfather of two hundred years ago. What, for instance, has the introduction of the potato done for the noses of mankind?"

Chatting thus, we walked back as far as the corner of the Rue Racine, where we parted; I to attend a lecture at the Ecole de Medecine, and Mueller to go home to his studio in the Rue Clovis.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXII.

RETURNED WITH THANKS.

A week or two had thus gone by since the dreadful evening at the Opera Comique, and all this time I had neither seen nor heard more of the fair Josephine. My acquaintance with Franz Mueller and the life of the Quartier Latin had, on the contrary, progressed rapidly. Just as the affair of the Opera had dealt a final blow to my romance a la grisette on the one hand, so had the excursion to Courbevoie, the visit to the Ecole de Natation, and the adventure of the Cafe Procope, fostered my intimacy with the artist on the other. We were both young, somewhat short of money, and brimful of fun. Each, too, had a certain substratum of earnestness underlying the mere surface-gayety of his character. Mueller was enthusiastic for art; I for poetry; and both for liberty. I fear, when I look back upon them, that we talked a deal of nonsense about Brutus, and the Rights of Man, and the noble savage, and all that sort of thing, in those hot-headed days of our youth. It was a form of political measles that the young men of that time were quite as liable to as the young men of our own; and, living as we then were in the heart of the most revolutionary city in Europe, I do not well see how we could have escaped the infection. Mueller (who took it worse than I did, and was very rabid indeed when I first knew him) belonged just then not only to the honorable brotherhood of Les Chicards, but also to a small debating club that met twice a week in a private room at the back of an obscure Estaminet in the Rue de la Harpe. The members of this club were mostly art-students, and some, like himself, Chicards—generous, turbulent, high-spirited boys, with more enthusiasm than brains, and a flow of words wholly out of proportion to the bulk of their ideas. As I came to know him more intimately, I used sometimes to go there with Mueller, after our cheap dinner in the Quartier and our evening stroll along the Boulevards or the Champs Elysees; and I am bound to admit that I never, before or since, heard quite so much nonsense of the declamatory sort as on those memorable occasions. I did not think it nonsense then, however. I admired it with all my heart; applauded the nursery eloquence of these sucking Mirabeaus and Camille Desmoulins as frantically as their own vanity could desire; and was even secretly chagrined that my own French was not yet fluent enough to enable me to take part in their discussions.

In the meanwhile, my debts were paid; and, having dropped out of society when I fell out of love with Madame de Marignan, I no longer overspent my allowance. I bought no more bouquets, paid for no more opera-stalls, and hired no more prancing steeds at seven francs the hour. I bade adieu to picture-galleries, flower-shows, morning concerts, dress boots, white kid gloves, elaborate shirt-fronts, and all the vanities of the fashionable world. In a word, I renounced the Faubourg St. Germain for the Quartier Latin, and applied myself to such work and such pleasures as pertained to the locality. If, after a long day at Dr. Cheron's, or the Hotel Dieu, or the Ecole de Medecine, I did waste a few hours now and then, I, at least, wasted them cheaply. Cheaply, but oh, so pleasantly! Ah me! those nights at the debating club, those evenings at the Chicards, those student's balls at the Chaumiere, those third-class trips to Versailles and Fontainebleau, those one-franc pit seats at the Gaiete and the Palais Royal, those little suppers at Pompon's and Flicoteau's—how delightful they were! How joyous! How free from care! And even when we made up a party and treated the ladies (for to treat the ladies is de rigueur in the code of Quartier Latin etiquette), how little it still cost, and what a world of merriment we had for the money!

It was well for me, too, and a source of much inward satisfaction, that my love-affair with Mademoiselle Josephine had faded and died a natural death. We never made up that quarrel of the Opera Comique, and I had not desired that we should make it up. On the contrary, I was exceedingly glad of the opportunity of withdrawing my attentions; so I wrote her a polite little note, in which I expressed my regret that our tastes were so dissimilar and our paths in life so far apart; wished her every happiness; assured her that I should ever remember her with friendly regard; and signed my name with a tremendous flourish at the bottom of the second page. With the note, however, I sent her a raised pie and a red and green shawl, of which I begged her acceptance in token of amity; and as neither of those gifts was returned, I concluded that she ate the one and wore the other, and that there was peace between us.

But the scales of fortune as they go up for one, go down for another. This man's luck is balanced by that man's ruin—Orestes falls sick, and Pylades returns from Kissingen cured of his lumbago—old Croesus dies, and little Miss Kilmansegg comes into the world with a golden spoon in her mouth, So it fell out with Franz Mueller and myself. As I happily steered clear of Charybdis, he drifted into Scylla—in other words, just as I recovered from my second attack of the tender passion, he caught the epidemic and fancied himself in love with the fair Marie.

I say "fancied," because his way of falling in love was so unlike my way, that I could scarcely believe it to be the same complaint. It affected neither his appetite, nor his spirits, nor his wardrobe. He made as many puns and smoked as many pipes as usual. He did not even buy a new hat. If, in fact, he had not told me himself, I should never have guessed that anything whatever was the matter with him.

It came out one day when he was pressing me to go with him to a certain tea-party at Madame Marotte's, in the Rue St. Denis.

"You see," said he, "it is la petite Marie's fete; and the party's in her honor; and they'd be so proud if we both went to it; and—and, upon my soul, I'm awfully fond of that little girl"....

"Of Marie Marotte?"

He nodded.

"You are not serious," I said.

"I am as serious," he replied, "as a dancing dervish."

And then, for I suppose I looked incredulous, he went on to justify himself.

"She's very good," he said, "and very pretty. Quite a Madonna face, to my thinking."

"You may see a dozen such Madonna faces among the nurses in the Luxembourg Gardens, every afternoon of your life," said I.

"Oh, if you come to that, every woman is like every other woman, up to a certain point."

"Les femmes se suivent et se ressemblent toujours," said I, parodying a well-known apothegm.

"Precisely, but then they wear their rue, or cause you to wear yours, 'with a difference.' This girl, however, escapes the monotony of her sex by one or two peculiarities:—she has not a bit of art about her, nor a shred of coquetry. She is as simple and as straightforward as an Arcadian. She doesn't even know when she is being made love to, or understand what you mean, when you pay her a compliment."

"Then she's a phenomenon—and what man in his senses would fall in love with a phenomenon?"

"Every man, mon cher enfant, who falls in love at all! The woman we worship is always a phenomenon, whether of beauty, or grace, or virtue—till we find her out; and then, probably, she becomes a phenomenon of deceit, or slovenliness, or bad temper! And now, to return to the point we started from—will you go with me to Madame Marotte's tea-party to-morrow evening at eight? Don't say 'No,' there's a good fellow."

"I'll certainly not say No, if you particularly want me to say Yes," I replied, "but—"

"Prythee, no buts! Let it be Yes, and the thing is settled. So—here we are. Won't you come in and smoke a pipe with me? I've a bottle of capital Rhenish in the cupboard."

We had met near the Odeon, and, as our roads lay in the same direction, had gone on walking and talking till we came to Mueller's own door in the Rue Clovis. I accepted the invitation, and followed him in. The portiere, a sour-looking, bent old woman with a very dirty duster tied about her head, hobbled out from her little dark den at the foot of the stairs, and handed him the key of his apartment.

"Tiens!" said she, "wait a moment—there's a parcel for you, M'sieur Mueller."

And so, hobbling back again, she brought out a small flat brown paper-packet sealed at both ends.

"Ah, I see—from the Emperor!" said Mueller. "Did he bring it himself, Madame Duphot, or did he send it by the Archbishop of Paris?"

A faint grin flitted over the little old woman's withered face.

"Get along with you, M'sieur Mueller," she said. "You're always playing the farceur! The parcel was brought by a man who looked like a stonemason."

"And nobody has called?"

"Nobody, except M'sieur Richard."

"Monsieur Richard's visits are always gratifying and delightful—may the diable fly away with him!" said Mueller. "What did dear Monsieur Richard want to-day, Madame Duphot?"

"He wanted to see you, and the third-floor gentleman also—about the rent."

"Dear Richard! What an admirable memory he has for dates! Did he leave any message, Madame Duphot?"

The old woman looked at me, and hesitated.

"He says, M'sieur Mueller—he says ..."

"Nay, this gentleman is a friend—you may speak out. What does our beloved and respected proprietaire say, Madame Duphot?"

"He says, if you don't both of you pay up the arrears by midday on Sunday next, he'll seize your goods, and turn you into the street."

"Ah, I always said he was the nicest man I knew!" observed Mueller, gravely. "Anything else, Madame Duphot?"

"Only this, Monsieur Mueller—that if you didn't go quietly, he'd take your windows out of the frames and your doors off the hinges."

"Comment! He bade you give me that message, the miserable old son of a spider! Quatre-vingt mille plats de diables aux truffes! Take my windows out of the frames, indeed! Let him try, Madame Duphot—that's all—let him try!"

And with this, Mueller, in a towering rage, led the way upstairs, muttering volleys of the most extraordinary and eccentric oaths of his own invention, and leaving the little old portiere grinning maliciously in the hall.

"But can't you pay him?" said I.

"Whether I can, or can't, it seems I must," he replied, kicking open the door of his studio as viciously as if it were the corporeal frame of Monsieur Richard. "The only question is—how? At the present moment, I haven't five francs in the till."

"Nor have I more than twenty. How much is it?"

"A hundred and sixty—worse luck!"

"Haven't the Tapottes paid for any of their ancestors yet?"

"Confound it!—yes; they've paid for a Marshal of France and a Farmer General, which are all I've yet finished and sent home. But there was the washerwoman, and the traiteur, and the artist's colorman, and, enfin, the devil to pay—and the money's gone, somehow!"

"I've only just cleared myself from a lot of debts," I said, ruefully, "and I daren't ask either my father or Dr. Cheron for an advance just at present. What is to be done?"

"Oh, I don't know. I must raise the money somehow. I must sell something—there's my copy of Titian's 'Pietro Aretino.' It's worth eighty francs, if only for a sign. And there's a Madonna and Child after Andrea del Sarto, worth a fortune to any enterprising sage-femme with artistic proclivities. I'll try what Nebuchadnezzar will do for me."

"And who, in the name of all that's Israelitish, is Nebuchadnezzar?"

"Nebuchadnezzar, my dear Arbuthnot, is a worthy Shylock of my acquaintance—a gentleman well known to Bohemia—one who buys and sells whatever is purchasable and saleable on the face of the globe, from a ship of war to a comic paragraph in the Charivari. He deals in bric-a-brac, sermons, government sinecures, pugs, false hair, light literature, patent medicines, and the fine arts. He lives in the Place des Victoires. Would you like to be introduced to him?"

"Immensely."

"Well, then, be here by eight to-morrow morning, and I'll take you with me. After nine he goes out, or is only visible to buyers. Here's my bottle of Rhenish—genuine Assmanshauser. Are you hungry?"

I admitted that I was not unconscious of a sensation akin to appetite.

He gazed steadfastly into the cupboard, and shook his head.

"A box of sardines," he said, gloomily, "nearly empty. Half a loaf, evidently disinterred from Pompeii. An inch of Lyons sausage, saved from the ark; the remains of a bottle of fish sauce, and a pot of currant jelly. What will you have?"

I decided for the relics of Pompeii and the deluge, and we sat down to discuss those curious delicacies. Having no corkscrew, we knocked off the neck of the bottle, and being short of glasses, drank our wine out of teacups.

"But you have never opened your parcel all this time," I said presently. "It may be full of billets de banque—who can tell?"

"That's true," said Mueller; and broke the seals.

"By all the Gods of Olympus!" he shouted, holding up a small oblong volume bound in dark green cloth. "My sketch-book!"

He opened it, and a slip of paper fell out. On this slip of paper were written, in a very neat, small hand, the words, "Returned with thanks;" but the page that contained the sketch made in the Cafe Procope was missing.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIII.

AN EVENING PARTY AMONG THE PETIT-BOURGEOISIE.

Madame Marotte, as I have already mentioned more than once, lived in the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis; which, as all the world knows, is a prolongation of the Rue St. Denis—just as the Rue St. Denis was, in my time, a transpontine continuation of the old Rue de la Harpe. Beginning at the Place du Chatelet as the Rue St. Denis, opening at its farther end on the Boulevart St. Denis and passing under the triumphal arch of Louis le Grand (called the Porte St. Denis), it there becomes first the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, and then the interminable Grande Route du St. Denis which drags its slow length along all the way to the famous Abbey outside Paris.

The Rue du Faubourg St. Denis is a changed street now, and widens out, prim, white, and glittering, towards the new barrier and the new Rond Point. But in the dear old days of which I tell, it was the sloppiest, worst-paved, worst-lighted, noisiest, narrowest, and most crowded of all the great Paris thoroughfares north of the Seine. All the country traffic from Chantilly and Compiegne came lumbering this way into the city; diligences, omnibuses, wagons, fiacres, water-carts, and all kinds of vehicles thronged and blocked the street perpetually; and the sound of wheels ceased neither by night nor by day. The foot-pavements of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, too, were always muddy, be the weather what it might; and the gutters were always full of stagnant pools. An ever-changing, never-failing stream of rustics from the country, workpeople from the factories of the banlieu, grisettes, commercial travellers, porters, commissionaires, and gamins of all ages here flowed to and fro. Itinerant venders of cakes, lemonade, cocoa, chickweed, allumettes, pincushions, six-bladed penknives, and never-pointed pencils filled the air with their cries, and made both day and night hideous. You could not walk a dozen yards at any time without falling down a yawning cellar-trap, or being run over by a porter with a huge load upon his head, or getting splashed from head to foot by the sudden pulling-up of some cart in the gutter beside you.

It was among the peculiarities of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis that everybody was always in a hurry, and that nobody was ever seen to look in at the shop-windows. The shops, indeed, might as well have had no windows, since there were no loungers to profit by them. Every house, nevertheless, was a shop, and every shop had its window. These windows, however, were for the most part of that kind before which the passer-by rarely cares to linger; for the commerce of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis was of that steady, unpretending, money-making sort that despises mere shop-front attractions. Grocers, stationers, corn-chandlers, printers, cutlers, leather-sellers, and such other inelegant trades, here most did congregate; and to the wearied wayfarer toiling along the dead level of this dreary pave, it was quite a relief to come upon even an artistically-arranged Magasin de Charcuterie, with its rows of glazed tongues, mighty Lyons sausages, yellow terrines of Strasbourg pies, fantastically shaped pickle-jars, and pyramids of silvery sardine boxes.

It was at number One Hundred and Two in this agreeable thoroughfare that my friend's innamorata resided with her maternal aunt, the worthy relict of Monsieur Jacques Marotte, umbrella-maker, deceased. Thither, accordingly, we wended our miry way, Mueller and I, after dining together at one of our accustomed haunts on the evening following the events related in my last chapter. The day had been dull and drizzly, and the evening had turned out duller and more drizzly still. We had not had rain for some time, and the weather had been (as it often is in Paris in October) oppressively hot; and now that the rain had come, it did not seem to cool the air at all, but rather to load it with vapors, and make the heat less endurable than before.

Having toiled all the way up from the Rue de la Harpe on the farther bank of the Seine, and having forded the passage of the Arch of Louis le Grand, we were very wet and muddy indeed, very much out of breath, and very melancholy objects to behold.

"It's dreadful to think of going into any house in this condition, Mueller," said I, glancing down ruefully at the state of my boots, and having just received a copious spattering of mud all down the left side of my person. "What is to be done?"

"We've only to go to a boot-cleaning and brushing-up shop," replied Mueller. "There's sure to be one close by somewhere."

"A boot-cleaning and brushing-up shop!" I echoed.

"What—didn't you know there were lots of them, all over Paris? Have you never noticed places that look like shops, with ground glass windows instead of shop-fronts, on which are painted up the words, 'cirage des bottes?'"

"Never, that I can remember."

"Then be grateful to me for a piece of very useful information! Suppose we turn down this by-street—it's mostly to the seclusion of by-streets and passages that our bashful sex retires to renovate its boots and its broadcloth."

I followed him, and in the course of a few minutes we found the sort of place of which we were in search. It consisted of one large, long room, like a shop without goods, counters, or shelves. A single narrow bench ran all round the walls, raised on a sort of wooden platform about three feet in width and three feet from the ground. Seated upon this bench, somewhat uncomfortably, as it seemed, with their backs against the wall, sat some ten or a dozen men and boys, each with an attendant shoeblack kneeling before him, brushing away vigorously. Two or three other customers, standing up in the middle of the shop, like horses in the hands of the groom, were having their coats brushed instead of their boots. Of those present, some looked like young shopmen, some were of the ouvrier class, and one or two looked like respectable small tradesmen and fathers of families. The younger men were evidently smartening up for an hour or two at some cheap ball or Cafe-Concert, now that the warehouse was closed, and the day's work was over.

Our boots being presently brought up to the highest degree of polish, and our garments cleansed of every disfiguring speck, we paid a few sous apiece and turned out again into the streets. Happily, we had not far to go. A short cut brought us into the midst of the Rue de Faubourg St. Denis, and within a few yards of a gloomy-looking little shop with the words "Veuve Marotte" painted up over the window, and a huge red and white umbrella dangling over the door. A small boy in a shiny black apron was at that moment putting up the shutters; the windows of the front room over the shop were brightly lit from within; and a little old gentleman in goloshes and a large blue cloak with a curly collar, was just going in at the private door. We meekly followed him, and hung up our hats and overcoats, as he did, in the passage.

"After you, Messieurs," said the little old gentleman, skipping politely back, and flourishing his hand in the direction of the stairs. "After you!"

We protested vehemently against this arrangement, and fought quite a skirmish of civilities at the foot of the stairs.

"I am at home here, Messieurs," said the little old gentleman, who, now that he was divested of hat, cloak, and goloshes, appeared in a flaxen toupet, an antiquated blue coat with brass buttons, a profusely frilled shirt, and low-cut shoes with silver buckles. "I am an old friend of the family—a friend of fifty years. I hold myself privileged to do the honors, Messieurs;—a friend of fifty years may claim to have his privileges."

With this he smirked, bowed, and backed against the wall, so that we were obliged to precede him. When we reached the landing, however, he (being evidently an old gentleman of uncommon politeness and agility) sprang forward, held open the door for us, and insisted on ushering us in.

It was a narrow, long-shaped room, the size of the shop, with two windows looking upon the street; a tiny square of carpet in the middle of the floor; boards highly waxed and polished; a tea-table squeezed up in one corner; a somewhat ancient-looking, spindle-legged cottage piano behind the door; a mirror and an ornamental clock over the mantelpiece; and a few French lithographs, colored in imitation of crayon drawings, hanging against the walls.

Madame Marotte, very deaf and fussy, in a cap with white ribbons, came forward to receive us. Mademoiselle Marie, sitting between two other young women of her own age, hung her head, and took no notice of our arrival.

The rest of the party consisted of a gentleman and two old ladies. The gentleman (a plump, black-whiskered elderly Cupid, with a vast expanse of shirt-front like an immense white ace of hearts, and a rose in his button-hole) was standing on the hearth-rug in a graceful attitude, with one hand resting on his hip, and the other under his coat-tails. Of the two old ladies, who seemed as if expressly created by nature to serve as foils to one another, one was very fat and rosy, in a red silk gown and a kind of black velvet hat trimmed with white marabout feathers and Roman pearls; while the other was tall, gaunt, and pale, with a long nose, a long upper lip, and supernaturally long yellow teeth. She wore a black gown, black cotton gloves, and a black velvet band across her forehead, fastened in the centre with a black and gold clasp containing a ghastly representation of a human eye, apparently purblind—which gave this lady the air of a serious Cyclops.

Madame Marotte was profuse of thanks, welcomes, apologies, and curtseys. It was so good of these gentlemen to come so far—and in such unpleasant weather, too! But would not these Messieurs give themselves the trouble to be seated? And would they prefer tea or coffee—for both were on the table? And where was Marie? Marie, whose fete-day it was, and who should have come forward to welcome these gentlemen, and thank them for the honor of their company!

Thus summoned, Mademoiselle Marie emerged from between the two young women, and curtsied demurely.

In the meanwhile, the little old gentleman who had ushered as in was bustling about the room, shaking hands with every one, and complimenting the ladies.

"Ah, Madame Desjardins," he said, addressing the stout lady in the hat, "enchanted to see you back from the sea-side!—you and your charming daughter. I do not know which looks the more young and blooming."

Then, turning to the grim lady in black:—

"And I am charmed to pay my homage to Madame de Montparnasse. I had the pleasure of being present at the brilliant debut of Madame's gifted daughter the other evening at the private performance of the pupils of the Conservatoire. Mademoiselle Honoria inherits the grand air, Madame, from yourself."

Then, to the plump gentleman with the shirt-front:—

"And Monsieur Philomene!—this is indeed a privilege and a pleasure. Bad weather, Monsieur Philomene, for the voice!"

Then, to the two girls:—

"Mesdemoiselles—Achille Dorinet prostrates himself at the feet of youth, beauty, and talent! Mademoiselle Honoria, I salute in you the future Empress of the tragic stage. Mademoiselle Rosalie, modesty forbids me to extol the acquired graces of even my most promising pupil; but I may be permitted to adore in you the graces of nature."

While I was listening to these scraps of salutation, Mueller was murmuring tender nothings in the ear of the fair Marie, and Madame Marotte was pouring out the coffee.

Monsieur Achille Dorinet, having gone the round of the company, next addressed himself to me.

"Permit me, Monsieur," he said, bringing his heels together and punctuating his sentences with little bows, "permit me, in the absence of a master of the ceremonies, to introduce myself—Achille Dorinet, Achille Dorinet, whose name may not, perhaps, be wholly unknown to you in connection with the past glories of the classical ballet. Achille Dorinet, formerly premier sujet of the Opera Francais—now principal choreographic professor at the Conservatoire Imperiale de Musique. I have had the honor, Monsieur, of dancing at Erfurth before their Imperial Majesties the Emperors Napoleon and Alexander, and a host of minor sovereigns. Those, Monsieur, were the high and palmy days of the art. We performed a ballet descriptive of the siege of Troy, and I undertook the part of a river god—the god Scamander, en effet. The great ladies of the court, Monsieur, were graciously pleased to admire my proportions as the god Scamander. I wore a girdle of sedges, a wreath of water-lilies, and a scarf of blue and silver. I have reason to believe that the costume became me."

"Sir," I replied gravely, "I do not doubt it."

"It is a noble art, Monsieur, l'art de la dame" said the former premier sujet, with a sigh; "but it is on the decline. Of the grand style of fifty years ago, only myself and tradition remain."

"Monsieur was, doubtless, a contemporary of Vestris, the famous dancer," I said.

"The illustrious Vestris, Monsieur," said the little old gentleman, "was, next to Louis the Fourteenth, the greatest of Frenchmen. I am proud to own myself his disciple, as well as his contemporary."

"Why next to Louis the Fourteenth, Monsieur Dorinet?" I asked, keeping my countenance with difficulty. "Why not next to Napoleon the First, who was a still greater conqueror?"

"But no dancer, Monsieur!" replied the ex-god Scamander, with a kind of half pirouette; "whereas the Grand Monarque was the finest dancer of his epoch."

Madame Marotte had by this time supplied all her guests with tea and coffee, while Monsieur Philomene went round with the cakes and bread and butter. Madame Desjardins spread her pocket-handkerchief on her lap—a pocket-handkerchief the size of a small table-cloth. Madame de Montparnasse, more mindful of her gentility, removed to a corner of the tea-table, and ate her bread and butter in her black cotton gloves.

"We hope we have another bachelor by-and-by," said Madame Marotte, addressing herself to the young ladies, who looked down and giggled. "A charming man, mesdemoiselles, and quite the gentleman—our locataire, M'sieur Lenoir. You know him, M'sieur Dorinet—pray tell these demoiselles what a charming man M'sieur Lenoir is!"

The little dancing-master bowed, coughed, smiled, and looked somewhat embarrassed.

"Monsieur Lenoir is no doubt a man of much information," he said, hesitatingly; "a traveller—a reader—a gentleman—oh! yes, certainly a gentleman. But to say that he is a—a charming man ... well, perhaps the ladies are the best judges of such nice questions. What says Mam'selle Marie?"

Thus applied to, the fair Marie became suddenly crimson, and had not a word to reply with. Monsieur Dorinet stared. The young ladies tittered. Madame Marotte, deaf as a post and serenely unconscious, smiled, nodded, and said "Ah, yes, yes—didn't I tell you so?"

"Monsieur Dorinet has, I fear, asked an indiscreet question," said Mueller, boiling over with jealousy.

"I—I have not observed Monsieur Lenoir sufficiently to—to form an opinion," faltered Marie, ready to cry with vexation.

Mueller glared at her reproachfully, turned on his heel, and came over to where I was standing.

"You saw how she blushed?" he said in a fierce whisper. "Sacredie! I'll bet my head she's an arrant flirt. Who, in the name of all the fiends, is this lodger she's been carrying on with? A lodger, too—oh! the artful puss!"

At this awkward moment, Monsieur Dorinet, with considerable tact, asked Monsieur Philomene for a song; and Monsieur Philomene (who as I afterwards learned was a favorite tenor at fifth-rate concerts) was graciously pleased to comply.

Not, however, without a little preliminary coquetry, after the manner of tenors. First he feared he was hoarse; then struck a note or two on the piano, and tried his falsetto; then asked for a glass of water; and finally begged that one of the young ladies would be so amiable as to accompany him.

Mademoiselle Honoria, inheriting rigidity from the maternal Cyclops, drew herself up and declined stiffly; but the other, whom the dancing-master had called Rosalie, got up directly and said she would do her best.

"Only," she added, blushing, "I play so badly!"

Monsieur Philomene was provided with two copies of his song—one for the accompanyist and one for himself; then, standing well away from the piano with his face to the audience, he balanced his music in his hand, made his little professional bow, coughed, ran his fingers through his hair, and assumed an expression of tender melancholy.

"One—two—three," began Mdlle. Rosalie, her little fat fingers staggering helplessly among the first cadenzas of the symphony. "One—two—three. One" ...

Monsieur Philomene interrupted with a wave of the hand, as if conducting an orchestra.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "not quite so fast, if you please! Andantino—andantino—one—two—three ... Just so! A thousand thanks!"

Again Mdlle. Rosalie attacked the symphony. Again Monsieur Philomene cleared his voice, and suffered a pensive languor to cloud his manly brow.

"Revenez, revenez, beaux jours de mon enfance,"

he began, in a small, tremulous, fluty voice.

"They'll have a long road to travel back, parbleu!" muttered Mueller.

"De votre aspect riant charmer ma souvenance!"

Here Mdlle. Rosalie struck a wrong chord, became involved in hopeless difficulties, and gasped audibly.

Monsieur Philomene darted a withering glance at her, and went on:—

"Mon coeur; mon pauvre coeur" ...

More wrong chords, and a smothered "mille pardons!" from Mdlle. Rosalie.

"Mon coeur, mon pauvre coeur a la tristesse en proie, En fouillant le passe"....

A dead stop on the part of Mdlle. Rosalie.

"En fouillant le passe"....

repeated the tenor, with the utmost severity of emphasis.

"Mais, mon Dieu, Rosalie! what are you doing?" cried Madame Desjardins, angrily. "Why don't you go on?"

Mdlle. Rosalie burst into a flood of tears.

"I—I can't!" she sobbed. "It's so—so very difficult—and"...

Madame Desjardins flung up her hands in despair.

"Ciel!" she cried, "and I have been paying three francs a lesson for you, Mademoiselle, twice a week for the last six years!"

"Mais, maman"....

"Fi done, Mademoiselle! I am ashamed of you. Make a curtsey to Monsieur Philomene this moment, and beg his pardon; for you have spoiled his beautiful song!"

But Monsieur Philomene would hear of no such expiation. His soul, to use his own eloquent language, recoiled from it with horror! The accompaniment, a vrai dire, was not easy, and la bien aimable Mam'selle Rosalie had most kindly done her best with it. Allons donc!—on condition that no more should be said on the subject, Monsieur Philomene would volunteer to sing a little unaccompanied romance of his own composition—a mere bagatelle; but a tribute to "les beaux yeux de ces cheres dames!"

So Mam'selle Rosalie wiped away her tears, and Madame Desjardins smoothed her ruffled feathers, and Monsieur Philomene warbled a plaintive little ditty in which "coeur" rhymed to "peur" and "amours" to "toujours" and "le sort" to "la mort" in quite the usual way; so giving great satisfaction to all present, but most, perhaps, to himself.

And now, hospitably anxious that each of her guests should have a chance of achieving distinction, Madame Marotte invited Mdlle. Honoria to favor the company with a dramatic recitation.

Mdlle. Honoria hesitated; exchanged glances with the Cyclops; and, in order to enhance the value of her performance, began raising all kinds of difficulties. There was no stage, for instance; and there were no footlights; but M. Dorinet met these objections by proposing to range all the seats at one end of the room, and to divide the stage off by a row of lighted candles.

"But it is so difficult to render a dramatic scene without an interlocutor!" said the young lady.

"What is it you require, ma chere demoiselle?" asked Madame Marotte.

"I have no interlocutor," said Mdlle. Honoria.

"No what, my love?"

"No interlocutor," repeated Mdlle. Honoria, at the top of her voice.

"Dear! dear! what a pity! Can't we send the boy for it? Marie, my child, bid Jacques run to Madame de Montparnasse's appartement in the Rue" ...

But Madame Marotte's voice was lost in the confusion; for Monsieur Dorinet was already deep in the arrangement of the room, and we were all helping to move the furniture. As for Mademoiselle's last difficulty, the little dancing-master met that by offering to read whatever was necessary to carry on the scene.

And now, the stage being cleared, the audience placed, and Monsieur Dorinet provided with a volume of Corneille, Mademoiselle Honoria proceeded to drape herself in an old red shawl belonging to Madame Marotte.

The scene selected is the fifth of the fourth act of Horace, where Camille, meeting her only surviving brother, upbraids him with the death of Curiace.

Mam'selle Honoria, as Camille, with clasped hands and tragic expression, stalks in a slow and stately manner towards the footlights.

(Breathless suspense of the audience.)

M. Dorinet, who should begin by vaunting his victory over the Curiatii, stops to put on his glasses, finds it difficult to read with all the candles on the ground, and mutters something about the smallness of the type.

Mdlle. Honoria, not to keep the audience waiting, surveys the ex-god Seamander with a countenance expressive of horror; starts; and takes a turn across the stage.

"Ma soeur," begins M. Dorinet, holding the book very much on one side, so as to catch the light upon the page, "ma soeur, voici le bras"....

"Ah, Heaven! my dear Mademoiselle, take care of the candles!" cries Madame Marotte in a shrill whisper.

... "le bras qui venge nos deux freres, Le bras qui rompt le cours de nos destins contraires, Qui nous rend"...

Here he lost his place; stammered; and recovered it with difficulty.

"Qui nous rend maitres d'Albe"....

Madame Marotte groans aloud in an agony of apprehension

"Ah, mon Dieu!" she exclaims, gaspingly, "if they didn't flare so, it wouldn't be half so dangerous!"

Here M. Dorinet dropped his book, and stooping to pick up the book, dropped his spectacles.

"I think," said Mdlle. Honoria, indignantly, "we had better begin again. Monsieur Dorinet, pray read with the help of a candle this time!"

And, with an angry toss of her head, Mdlle. Honoria went up the stage, put on her tragedy face again, and prepared once more to stalk down to the footlights.

Monsieur Dorinet, in the meanwhile, had snatched up a candle, readjusted his spectacles, and found his place.

"Ma soeur" he began again, holding the book close to his eyes and the candle just under his nose, and nodding vehemently with every emphasis:—

"Ma soeur, voici le bras qui venge nos deux freres, Le bras qui rompt le cours de nos destins contraires, Qui nous rend maitres d'Albe" ...

A piercing scream from Madame Marotte, a general cry on the part of the audience, and a strong smell of burning, brought the dancing-master to a sudden stop. He looked round, bewildered.

"Your wig! Your wig's on fire!" cried every one at once.

Monsieur Dorinet clapped his hand to his head, which was now adorned with a rapidly-spreading glory; burned his fingers; and cut a frantic caper.

"Save him! save him!" yelled Madame Marotte.

But almost before the words were out of her mouth, Mueller, clearing the candles at a bound, had rushed to the rescue, scalped Monsieur Dorinet by a tour de main, cast the blazing wig upon the floor, and trampled out the fire.

Then followed a roar of "inextinguishable laughter," in which, however, neither the tragic Camille nor the luckless Horace joined.

"Heavens and earth!" murmured the little dancing-master, ruefully surveying the ruins of his blonde peruke. And then he put his hand to his head, which was as bald as an egg.

In the meanwhile Mdlle. Honoria, who had not yet succeeded in uttering a syllable of her part, took no pains to dissemble her annoyance; and was only pacified at last by a happy proposal on the part of Monsieur Philomene, who suggested that "this gifted demoiselle" should be entreated to favor the society with a soliloquy.

Thus invited, she draped herself again, stalked down to the footlights for the third time, and in a high, shrill voice, with every variety of artificial emphasis and studied gesture, recited Voltaire's famous "Death of Coligny," from the Henriade.

In the midst of this performance, just at that point when the assassins are described as falling upon their knees before their victim, the door of the room was softly opened, and another guest slipped in unseen behind us. Slipped in, indeed, so quietly that (the backs of the audience being turned that way) no one seemed to hear, and no one looked round but myself.

Brief as was that glance, and all in the shade as he stood, I recognised him instantly.

It was the mysterious stranger of the Cafe Procope.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

MY AUNT'S FLOWER GARDEN.

Having despatched the venerable Coligny much to her own satisfaction and apparently to the satisfaction of her hearers, Mdlle. Honoria returned to private life; Messieurs Philomene and Dorinet removed the footlights; the audience once more dispersed itself about the room; and Madame Marotte welcomed the new-comer as Monsieur Lenoir.

"Monsieur est bien aimable," she said, nodding and smiling, and, with tremulous hands, smoothing down the front of her black silk gown. "I had told these young ladies that we hoped for the honor of Monsieur's society. Will Monsieur permit me to introduce him?"

"With pleasure, Madame Marotte."

And M. Lenoir—white cravatted, white kid-gloved, hat in hand, perfectly well-dressed in full evening black, and wearing a small orange-colored rosette at his button-hole—bowed, glanced round the room, and, though his eyes undoubtedly took in both Mueller and myself, looked as if he had never seen either of us in his life.

I< saw Mueller start, and the color fly into his face.

"By Heaven!" he exclaimed, "it is—it must be ... look at him, Arbuthnot! If that isn't the man who stole my sketch-book, I'll eat my head!"

"It is the man," I replied. "I recognised him ten minutes ago, when he first came in."

"You are certain?"

"Quite certain."

"And yet—there is something different!"

There was something different; but, at the same time, much that was identical. There was the same strange, inscrutable look, the same bronzed complexion, the same military bearing. M. Lenoir, it was true, was well, and even elegantly dressed; whereas, the stranger of the Cafe Procope bore all the outward stigmata of penury; but that was not all. There was yet "something different." The one looked like a man who had done, or suffered, a wrong in his time; who had an old quarrel with the world; and who only sought to hide himself, his poverty, and his bitter pride from the observation of his fellow men. The other stood before us dignified, decore, self-possessed, a man not only of the world, but apparently no stranger to that small section of it called "the great world." In a word, the man of the Cafe, sunken, sullen, threadbare as he was, would have been almost less out of his proper place in Madame Marotte's society of small trades-people and minor professionals, than was M. Lenoir with his grand air and his orange-colored ribbon.