u think of his theory of faces?"

"I know nothing of the subject, and cannot form a judgment; but it
sounded as if it might be true."

"Yes--just that. It may be true, and it may not. If true, then for my
own part I should like to pursue his theory a step further, and trace
the operation of these secret processes by means of which
I am, happily, such a much better-looking fellow than my
great-great-great-great-grandfather of two hundred years ago. What, for
instance, has the introduction of the potato done for the noses
of mankind?"

Chatting thus, we walked back as far as the corner of the Rue Racine,
where we parted; I to attend a lecture at the Ecole de Medecine, and
Mueller to go home to his studio in the Rue Clovis.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXII.

RETURNED WITH THANKS.

A week or two had thus gone by since the dreadful evening at the Opera
Comique, and all this time I had neither seen nor heard more of the fair
Josephine. My acquaintance with Franz Mueller and the life of the
Quartier Latin had, on the contrary, progressed rapidly. Just as the
affair of the Opera had dealt a final blow to my romance _a la grisette_
on the one hand, so had the excursion to Courbevoie, the visit to the
Ecole de Natation, and the adventure of the Cafe Procope, fostered my
intimacy with the artist on the other. We were both young, somewhat
short of money, and brimful of fun. Each, too, had a certain substratum
of earnestness underlying the mere surface-gayety of his character.
Mueller was enthusiastic for art; I for poetry; and both for liberty. I
fear, when I look back upon them, that we talked a deal of nonsense
about Brutus, and the Rights of Man, and the noble savage, and all that
sort of thing, in those hot-headed days of our youth. It was a form of
political measles that the young men of that time were quite as liable
to as the young men of our own; and, living as we then were in the heart
of the most revolutionary city in Europe, I do not well see how we could
have escaped the infection. Mueller (who took it worse than I did, and
was very rabid indeed when I first knew him) belonged just then not only
to the honorable brotherhood of Les Chicards, but also to a small
debating club that met twice a week in a private room at the back of an
obscure Estaminet in the Rue de la Harpe. The members of this club were
mostly art-students, and some, like himself, Chicards--generous,
turbulent, high-spir