of
his good blood was on him; his face would have attracted and interested
in ever so large a crowd. He was very pale, and there was a tired look
on his wide, powerful forehead and in his long dark eyes, and a weary
line or two about his handsome mouth, as if he had exhausted his youth
very quickly; and, indeed, to see life as he had seen it _is_ somewhat a
fatiguing process, and apt to make one blase before one's time.

The rooms in which he sat were intensely comfortable, and very
provocative to a quiet pipe and idleness. To be sure, if one judged his
tastes by them, they were not probably, to use the popular jargon,
"healthy," for they had nothing very domestic or John Halifaxish about
them, and were certainly not calculated to gratify the eyes of maiden
aunts and spinster sisters.

There were fencing-foils, pistols, tobacco-boxes of every style and
order, from ballet-girls to terriers' heads. There were three or four
cockatoos and parrots on stands chattering bits of Quartier Latin songs,
or imitating the cries in the street below. There were cards,
dice-boxes, albums a rire, meerschaums, lorgnons, pink notes, no end of
De Kock's and Lebrun's books, and all the etcaeteras of chambres de
garcon strewed about: and there were things, too--pictures, statuettes,
fauteuils, and a breakfast-service of Sevres and silver--that Du Barry
need not have scrupled to put in her "petite bon-bonniere" at Luciennes.

So busy was he sketching and singing

"Messieurs les etudiens
Montez a la Chaumiere!"

that he never heard a knock at his door, and he looked up with an
impatient frown on his white, broad forehead as a man entered _sans
ceremonie_.

"Mon Dieu! Ernest," cried his friend, "what the devil are you doing here
with your pipe and your pastels, when I've been waiting at Tortoni's a
good half-hour, and at last, out of patience, drove here to see what on
earth had become of you?"

"My dear fellow, I beg you a thousand pardons," said Vaughan, lazily. "I
was sketching this, and you and your horses went clean out of my head, I
honestly confess."

"And your breakfast too, it seems," said De Concressault, glancing at
the table. "Is it Madame de Melusine or the little Bluette whose
portrait absorbs you so much? No, by Jove! it's a prettier woman than
either of 'em. If she's like that, take me to see her this instant. What
glorious gold hair! I adore your countrywomen when they've hair that
color. Where did you get that