bas-reliefs that they seem clad in inviolate innocence, now in a
flowered gown, with powdered ringlets sweeping her naked shoulders,
that had an inexpressible charm in their spare outlines suggestive
of the bitter-sweet taste of an unripe fruit. She reminded him
in this attire of some old-time pastel of gallant ladies such
as the bookbinder's son had pored over in the dealers' shops
on the _Quai Voltaire_. Anon she would be crowned with a
hawk's crest, girdled with plaques of gold on which were traced
magic symbols in clustered rubies, clad in the barbaric splendour
of an Eastern queen; presently she would be wearing the black
hood, pointed above the brow, and the dusky velvet robe of a
Royal widow, like the portraits to be seen guarded as holy relics
in a chamber of the Louvre; last travesty of all (and it was in
this guise he found her most adorable), as a modern horsewoman,
clothed from neck to heel in a close-fitting habit, a man's hat
set rakishly on her dainty head. He would fain spend his life in
these romantic dreams, and devoured Racine, the Greek tragedians,
Corneille, Shakespeare, Voltaire's verses on the death of Adrienne
Lecouvreur, and whatever in modern literature appealed to him
as elegant or fraught with passion. But in all these creations
it was one image, and one only, that he saw.

Going one evening to the dram-shop with the Marquis Tudesco,
who had given up all idea of discarding his checked waistcoat,
he made the acquaintance of an old man whose white hair lay in
ringlets on his shoulders and who still had the blue eyes of a
child. He was an architect fallen to ruin along with the little
Gothic erections he had raised at great expense in the Paris
suburbs about 1840. His name was Théroulde, and the old fellow,
whose smiling face belied his wretched condition, overflowed