ion or hope. But, as the glass seals tell us, "such is life." We
are all mysteries to one another. The pleasant fellow whom I invite to
dinner because he amuses me, carries a scar on his soul which it would
frighten me to see; and he in turn, when he praises my claret, little
dreams of the carking care that poisons it upon my palate, and robs it
of all its aroma. Perhaps the laughter-loving painter himself had his
own little tragedy locked up in some secret corner of the heart that
seemed to beat so lightly under that braided blouse of Palais Royal cut
and Quartier Latin fashion! Who could tell? And of what use would it be,
if it were told? Smiles carry one through the world more agreeably than
tears, and if the skeleton is only kept decently out of sight in its own
unsuspected closet, so much the better for you and me, and society
at large.

Dinner over, and the serious waiter dismissed with the dessert and the
empty bottles, we sat by the open window for a long time, sipping our
coffee, smoking our cigars, and watching the busy life of the Boulevard
below. There the shops were all alight and the passers-by more numerous
than by day. Carriages were dashing along, full of opera-goers and
ball-room beauties. On the pavement just under our window were seated
the usual crowd of Boulevard idlers, sipping their _al fresco_ absinthe,
and _grog-au-vin._ In the very next room, divided from us by only a
slender partition, was a noisy party of young men and girls. We could
hear their bursts of merriment, the chinking of their glasses as they
pledged one another, the popping of the champagne corks, and almost the
very jests that passed from lip to lip. Presently a band came and played
at the corner of an adjoining street. All was mirth, all was life, all
was amusement and dissipation both in-doors and out-of-doors, in the
"care-charming" city of Paris on that pleasant September night; and we,
of course, were gay and noisy, like our neighbors. Dalrymple and Mueller
could scarcely be called new acquaintances. They had met some few times
at the _Chicards_, and also, some years before, in Rome. What stories
they told of artists whom they had known! What fun they made of
Academic dons and grave professors high in authority! What pictures they
drew, of life in Rome--in Vienna--in Paris! Though we had no ladies of
our party and were only three in number, I am not sure that the
merry-makers in the next room laughed any louder or oftener th