very
much surprised to learn that this unattached negro is the confidant of
his great friend? It is a subject to paint, which has never been well
treated; the passionate friendships of a Tattet for a Musset, of an
Eckermann for a Goethe, of an Asselineau for a Beaudelaire, the total
absorption of the admirer in the admired. Florent found that the genius
of the great painter had need of a fortune, and he gave him his sister.
Were he to find that that genius required a passion in order to develop
still more, he would not object. My word of honor! He glanced at the
Countess just now with gratitude! Why not, after all? Lincoln is a
colorist of the highest order, although his desire to be with the tide
has led him into too many imitations. But it is his race. Young Madame
Maitland has as much sense as the handle of a basket; and Madame Steno
is one of those extraordinary women truly created to exalt the ideals of
an artist. Never has he painted anything as he painted the portrait of
Alba. I can hear this dialogue:

"'You know the Pole has returned? What Pole? The Countess's. What? You
believe those calumnies?' Ah, what comedies here below! 'Gad! The cabman
has also committed his 'schlemylade'. I told him Rue Sistina, near La
Trinite-des-Monts, and here he is going through Place Barberini instead
of cutting across Capo le Case. It is my fault as well. I should not
have heeded it had there been an earthquake. Let us at least admire the
Triton of Bernin. What a sculptor that man was! yet he never thought of
nature except to falsify it."

These incoherent remarks were made with a good-nature decidedly
optimistic, as could be seen, when the fiacre finally drew up at the
given address. It was that of a very modest restaurant decorated with
this signboard: 'Trattoria al Marzocco.' And the 'Marzocco', the lion
symbolical of Florence, was represented above the door, resting his paw
on the escutcheon ornamented with the national lys. The appearance of
that front did not justify the choice which the elegant Dorsenne had
made of the place at which to dine when he did not dine in society.
But his dilettantism liked nothing better than those sudden leaps from
society, and M. Egiste Brancadori, who kept the Marzocco, was one of
those unconscious buffoons of whom he was continually in search in real
life, one of those whom he called his "Thebans", in reference to King
Lear. "I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban," cried the mad