flesh, broad across the shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had
in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl; it was now clipped short,
and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of
its colour and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore neither beard nor
mustache, and the darkness of his hair was contrasted by a clear fairness
of complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, and eyes of that rare
gray tint which has in it no shade of blue,--peculiar eyes, which give a
very distinct character to the face. The man must have been singularly
handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in his forty-
seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind of
comeliness. The form of the features and the contour of the face were
those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty
would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier
days; but the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care and sorrow
between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed lengthened,
and the features had become more salient.

Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had seen him
before, and could not remember where or when; but at all events he
recognized at the first glance a man of rank and of the great world.

"Pray be seated, Monsieur," he said, resuming his own easy-chair.

The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend of his head,
drew his chair near to the financier's, stretched his limbs with the ease
of a man making himself at home, and fixing his calm bright eyes quietly
on Louvier, said, with a bland smile,--

"My dear old friend, do you not remember me? You are less altered than I
am."