[Illustration: _From du Maurier's painting._]


In those days we called all that caricaturing, and caricature he
certainly did; mainly me and himself. From the first he imagined he
saw a marked contrast between us. His nose was supposed to be turned
up, and mine down, whereas really neither his nor mine much deviated
from the ordinary run of noses; my lower lip certainly does project,
but his does not particularly recede, and so on. But the imaginary
contrast inspired him in the earliest days of our acquaintance,
and started him on the warpath of pen-and-inking. He drew us in all
conceivable and in some inconceivable situations. "Moscheles and
I," he says on one page, "had we not been artists, or had we been
artistically beautiful; then again, if we were of the fair sex,
or soldiers, or, by way of showing our versatility, if we were
horses." In that page he seems to have focussed the essence of our
characteristics, whilst appearing only to delineate our human and
equine possibilities. Poor F., one of our German friends, fares badly,
a donkey's head portraying him "s'il était cheval."

[Illustration: MOSCHELES ET MOI SI NOUS AVIONS ÉTÉ DU BEAU SEXE.]

[Illustration: SI NOUS AVIONS ÉTÉ BEAUX.]

In consequence of the growing trouble with his eyes, du Maurier left
Antwerp for Malines, to place himself under the care of an eminent
oculist who resided within easy reach of that city. That blessed
blister--"ce sacré vésicatoire," as he calls it, is one of the
doctor's remedies.