congruous an apparition as this in an American woodland? How on
earth did this picturesque waif from the Quartier Latin come to stray so
far away from the Boul' Miche! For the little boyish figure of a man that
sat sketching in my place was the Frenchiest-looking Frenchman you ever
saw--with his dark, smoke-dried skin, his long, straight, blue-black
hair, his fine, rather ferocious brown eyes, his long, delicate French
nose, his bristling black moustache and short, sting-shaped imperial. He
wore on his head a soft white felt hat, somewhat of the shape affected by
circus clowns, and too small for him. His coat was of green velveteen
corduroy and he wore knickerbockers of an eloquent plaid.

He was intently absorbed in sketching a prosperous group of weeds, a
crazy quilt of wildly jostling colour, that had grown up around the decay
of a fallen tree, and made a fine blazon of contrast against the massed
foliage in the background. There was no mistake how the stranger loved
this patch of coloured weeds. Here was a man whose whole soul was
evidently--colour. There was a look in his face as if he could just eat
those oranges and purples, and soft greens; and there was a sort of
passionate assurance in the way in which he handled his brushes, and
delicately plunged them here and there in his colour-box, that spoke a
master. So intent was he upon his work that, when I came up behind him,
he seemed unaware of my presence; though his oblivion was actually the
conscious indifference of a landscape painter, accustomed to the ambling
cow and the awe-struck peasant looking over his shoulder as he worked.

"Great bunch of weeds," he said presently, without looking up, and still
painting, drawing the while at a quaint pipe about an inch long.

"O, you are not the Boul' Miche, after all," I exclaimed in
disappointment.

"Aren't I, though?" he said at last, looking up in interested surprise.
"Ever at--?" mentioning the name of a well-known cafe, one of the many
rally-points of the Quartier.

"I should say," I answered.

"Well!"

And thereupon we both plunged into delighted reminiscence of that city
which, as none other, makes immediate friends of all her lovers. For a
while the woods faded away, and in that tangled clearing rose the towers
of Notre Dame, and the Seine glittered on under its great bridges, and
again the world smelled of absinthe, and picturesque madmen gesticulated
in clouds of tobacco smoke, and propounded fantast