was so highly perched and so
straitened in my embrasure that I had to wait, with what patience I
might, the new arrival. I was deep in my guesses what sort of "artist"
he might prove, when I saw the head of a horse peering over the
shoulders of the audience, and then the entire figure of the quadruped
as he emerged into the circle, all sheeted and shrouded from gaze. With
one dexterous sweep the groom removed all the clothing, and there stood
before me my own lost treasure,--Blondel himself! I would have known him
among ten thousand. He was thinner, perhaps, certainly thinner, but in
all other respects the same; his silky mane and his long tassel of a
tail hung just as gracefully as of yore, and, as he ambled round, he
moved his head with a courteous inclination, as though to acknowledge
the plaudits he met with.

There was in his air the dignity that said, "I am one who has seen
better days. It was not always thus with me. Applaud if you must, and if
you will; but remember that I accept your plaudits with reserve, perhaps
even with reluctance." Poor fellow, my heart bled for him! I felt as
though I saw a cathedral canon cutting somersaults, and all this while,
by some strange inconsistency, I had not a sympathy to bestow on the
human actors in the scene. "As for them," thought I, "they have accepted
this degradation of their own free will. If they had not shirked
honest labor, they need never have been clowns or pantaloons; but
Blondel--Blondel, whom fate had stamped as the palfrey of some high-born
maiden, or, at least, the favorite steed of one who would know how to
lavish care on an object of such perfection--Blondel, who had borne
himself so proudly in high places, and who, even in his declining
fortunes, had been the friend and fellow-traveller of--yes, why should
I shame to say it? Posterity will speak of Potts without the detracting
malice and envious rancor of contemporaries; and when, in some future
age, a great philanthropist or statesman should claim the credit of
some marvellous discovery, some wondrous secret by which humanity may be
bettered, a learned critic will tell the world how this great invention
was evidently known to Potts, how at such a line or such a page we shall
find that Potts knew it all."

The wild cheering of the crowd beneath cut short these speculations, and
now I saw Blondel cantering gayly round the circle, with a handkerchief
in his mouth. If in sportive levity it chanced to fall,