the night before his visit to the Louvre at the Cafe Anglais--some one
had told him it was an experience not to be omitted--and he had slept
none the less the sleep of the just. His usual attitude and carriage
were of a rather relaxed and lounging kind, but when under a special
inspiration, he straightened himself, he looked like a grenadier on
parade. He never smoked. He had been assured--such things are said--that
cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite capable of
believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as about homeopathy.
He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely, symmetrical balance of
the frontal and the occipital development, and a good deal of straight,
rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose had a
bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for
a rather abundant mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw and
sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type; but the traces of
national origin are a matter of expression even more than of feature,
and it was in this respect that our friend's countenance was supremely
eloquent. The discriminating observer we have been supposing might,
however, perfectly have measured its expressiveness, and yet have been
at a loss to describe it. It had that typical vagueness which is not
vacuity, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being
committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude of
general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at
one's own disposal so characteristic of many American faces. It was our
friend's eye that chiefly told his story; an eye in which innocence
and experience were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory
suggestions, and though it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of
romance, you could find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid
and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive
yet skeptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent and extremely
good-humored, there was something vaguely defiant in its concessions,