ognize him.

He had taken but a few steps, his hat in his hand, like a stranger who is
about to accost another, when the photographer came toward him with
outstretched hand, and a friendly smile on his face.

"You, my dear friend! What good fortune is worth the pleasure of your
visit tome? Can I be useful to you in any way?"

"You recognize me, then?"

"What! Do I recognize you? Do you ask that because you have cut your hair
and beard? Certainly it changes you and gives you a new physiognomy; but
I should be unworthy of my business if, by a different arrangement of the
hair, I could not recognize you.

"Besides, eyes of steel like yours are not forgotten; they are a
description and a signature."

Then this means in which he placed so much confidence was only a new
imprudence, as the question, "You recognize me, then?" was a mistake.

"Come, I will pose you at once," the photographer said. "Very curious,
this shaved head, and still more interesting, I think, than with the
beard and long hair. The traits of character are more clearly seen."

"It is not for a new portrait that I have come, but for the old one. Have
you any of the proofs?"

"I think not, but I will see. In any case, if you wish some they are
easily made, since I have the plate."

"Will you look them up? For I have not a single proof left of those you
gave me, and on looking at myself in the glass this morning I found such
changes between my face of to-day and that of three years ago, that I
would like to study them. Certain ideas came to me on the expression of
the physiognomy, that I wish to study, with something to support them."

The search for the proofs made by an assistant led to no results; there
were no proofs.

"Exactly; and for several days I have thought of making some," the
photographer said. "Because your day of glory will come, when your
portrait will be in a distinguished place in the shop-windows and
collections. Every one talks of your 'concours'. Although I have
abandoned medicine without the wish to return to it, I have not become
indifferent to what concerns it, and I learned of your success. Which
portrait shall we put in circulation? The old or the new?"

"The new."

"Then let us arrange the pose."

"Not to-day; it is only yesterday that I was shaved, fearing an attack of
pelagre, and the skin covered by the beard has a crude whiteness that
will accentuate the hardness of my physiognomy, which is really useless.
We w