Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of one of the streets
of the Chausee d'Antin, brushed close by the stately pedestrian above
described, caught sight of his countenance, stopped short, and exclaimed,
"Alain!" The person thus abruptly accosted turned his eye tranquilly on
the eager face, of which all the lower part was enveloped in black beard;
and slightly lifting his hat, with a gesture of the head that implied,
"Sir, you are mistaken; I have not the honour to know you," continued his
slow indifferent way. The would-be acquaintance was not so easily
rebuffed. "Peste," he said, between his teeth, "I am certainly right.
He is not much altered: of course I AM; ten years of Paris would improve
an orang-outang." Quickening his step, and regaining the side of the man
he had called "Alain," he said, with a well-bred mixture of boldness and
courtesy in his tone and countenance,

"Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. Put surely I accost Alain de
Kerouec, son of the Marquis de Rochebriant."

"True, sir; but--"

"But you do not remember me, your old college friend, Frederic
Lemercier?"

"Is it possibly?" cried Alain, cordially, and with an animation which
charged the whole character of his countenance. "My dear Frederic, my
dear friend, this is indeed good fortune! So you, too, are at Paris?"

"Of course; and you? Just come, I perceive," he added, somewhat
satirically, as, linking his arm in his new-found friend's, he glanced at
the cut of that friend's coat-collar.