XXX.

A MAN WITH A HISTORY.

The society of the outer salon differed essentially from the society of
the inner salon at the Cafe Procope. It was noisier--it was
shabbier--it was smokier. The conversation in the inner salon was of a
general character on the whole, and, as one caught sentences of it here
and there, seemed for the most part to relate to the literature and news
of the day--to the last important paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, to
the new drama at the Odeon, or to the article on foreign politics in the
_Journal des Debats_. But in the outer salon the talk was to the last
degree shoppy, and overflowed with the argot of the studios. Some few
medical students were clustered, it is true, in a corner near the door;
but they were so outnumbered by the artists at the upper end of the
room, that these latter seemed to hold complete possession, and behaved
more like the members of a recognised club than the casual customers of
a cafe. They talked from table to table. They called the waiters by
their Christian names. They swaggered up and down the middle of the room
with their hats on their heads, their hands in their pockets, and their
pipes in their mouths, as coolly as if it were the broad walk of the
Luxembourg gardens.

And the appearance of these gentlemen was not less remarkable than their
deportment. Their hair, their beards, their clothes, were of the wildest
devising. They seemed one and all to have started from a central idea,
that central idea being to look as unlike their fellow-men as possible;
and thence to have diverged into a variety that was nothing short of
infinite. Each man had evidently modelled himself upon his own ideal,
and no two ideals were alike. Some were picturesque, some were
grotesque; and some, it must be admitted, were rather dirty ideals, into
the realization of which no such paltry considerations as those of soap,
water, or brushes were permitted to enter.

Here, for instance, were Roundhead crops and flowing locks of Cavalier
redundancy--steeple-crowned hats, and Roman cloaks draped
bandit-fashion--moustachios frizzed and brushed up the wrong way in the
style of Louis XIV.--pointed beards and slouched hats, after the manner
of Vandyke---patriarchal beards _a la Barbarossa_--open collars, smooth
chins, and long undulating locks of the Raffaelle type--coats, blouses,
paletots of inconceivable cut, and all kinds of unusual colors--in a
word, every eccentricity of clothing, sho