gold chain round his neck, at the end of which no doubt was a gold

watch! From that moment the young man assumed, in Oscar's eyes, the
proportions of a personage.

Living in the rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school
by his step-father, Oscar had no other points of comparison since his

adolescence than the poverty-stricken household of his mother. Brought
up strictly, by Moreau's advice, he seldom went to the theatre, and

then to nothing better than the Ambigu-Comique, where his eyes could
see little elegance, if indeed the eyes of a child riveted on a

melodrama were likely to examine the audience. His step-father still
wore, after the fashion of the Empire, his watch in the fob of his

trousers, from which there depended over his abdomen a heavy gold
chain, ending in a bunch of heterogeneous ornaments, seals, and a

watch-key with a round top and flat sides, on which was a landscape in
mosaic. Oscar, who considered that old-fashioned finery as the "ne

plus ultra" of adornment, was bewildered by the present revelation of
superior and negligent elegance. The young man exhibited, offensively,

a pair of spotless gloves, and seemed to wish to dazzle Oscar by
twirling with much grace a gold-headed switch cane.

Oscar had reached that last quarter of adolescence when little things
cause immense joys and immense miseries,--a period when youth prefers

misfortune to a ridiculous suit of clothes, and caring nothing for the
real interests of life, torments itself about frivolities, about

neckcloths, and the passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的；易怒的">passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young
fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous

because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is
elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and

of genuineadmiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they
have no root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,--the

richness of the youthfulimagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only
child, kept severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put

upon herself all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a
young man of twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-

coat of fancy cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the
worse taste, is nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks

of social life by inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men
of genius themselves succumb to this primitivepassion. Did not

Rousseau admire Ventura and Bacle?
But Oscar passed from peccadillo to evil feelings. He felt humiliated;

he was angry with the youth he envied, and there rose in his heart a
secret desire to show openly that he himself was as good as the object

of his envy.
The two young fellows continued to walk up and own from the gate to

the stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned
they looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar,

persuaded that their jokes and laughterconcerned himself, affected
the utmostindifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately

brought into vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, "'Tis
Voltaire's fault, 'tis Rousseau's fault."

"Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera," said Amaury.
This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden "back,"

and called to Pierrotin:--
"When do we start?"

"Presently," said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand,
and gazing toward the rue d'Enghien.

At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man
accompanied by a true "gamin," who was followed by a porter dragging a

hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him
confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his

own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart,
which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of

singular shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the
youngest of the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed

away with such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his
mother, now standing on the other side of the street, saw none of the

paraphernalia which might have revealed to him the profession of his
new travelling companion.

The gamin, who must have been sixteen years of age, wore a gray blouse
buckled round his waist by a polished leather belt. His cap, jauntily

perched on the side of his head, seemed the sign of a merry nature,
and so did the picturesquedisorder of the curly brown hair which fell

upon his shoulders. A black-silk cravat drew a line round his very
white neck, and added to the vivacity of his bright gray eyes. The

animation of his brown and rosy face, the moulding of his rather large
lips, the ears detached from his head, his slightly turned-up nose,--

in fact, all the details of his face proclaimed the lively spirit of a
Figaro, and the careless gayety of youth, while the vivacity of his

gesture and his mocking eye revealed an intellect already developed by
the practice of a profession adopted very early in life. As he had

already some claims to personal value, this child, made man by Art or
by vocation, seemed indifferent to the question of costume; for he

looked at his boots, which had not been polished, with a quizzical
air, and searched for the spots on his brown Holland trousers less to

remove them than to see their effect.
"I'm in style," he said, giving himself a shake and addressing his

companion.
The glance of the latter, showed authority over his adept, in whom a

practised eye would at once have recognized the joyous pupil of a
painter, called in the argot of the studios a "rapin."

"Behave yourself, Mistigris," said his master, giving him the nickname
which the studio had no doubt bestowed upon him.

The master was a slight and pale young man, with extremely thick black
hair, worn in a disorder that was actuallyfantastic. But this

abundant mass of hair seemed necessary to an enormous head, whose vast
forehead proclaimed a precocious intellect. A strained and harassed

face, too original to be ugly, was hollowed as if this noticeable
young man suffered from some chronicmalady, or from privations caused

by poverty (the most terrible of all chronic maladies), or from griefs
too recent to be forgotten. His clothing, analogous, with due

allowance, to that of Mistigris, consisted of a shabby surtout coat,
American-green in color, much worn, but clean and well-brushed; a

black waistcoat buttoned to the throat, which almost concealed a
scarlet neckerchief; and trousers, also black and even more worn than

the coat, flapping his thin legs. In addition, a pair of very muddy
boots indicated that he had come on foot and from some distance to the

coach office. With a rapid look this artist seized the whole scene of
the Lion d'Argent, the stables, the courtyard, the various lights and

shades, and the details; then he looked at Mistigris, whose satirical
glance had followed his own.

"Charming!" said Mistigris.
"Yes, very," replied the other.

"We seem to have got here too early," pursued Mistigris. "Couldn't we
get a mouthful somewhere? My stomach, like Nature, abhors a vacuum."

"Have we time to get a cup of coffee?" said the artist, in a gentle
voice, to Pierrotin.

"Yes, but don't be long," answered the latter.
"Good; that means we have a quarter of an hour," remarked Mistigris,

with the innate genius for observation of the Paris rapin.
The pair disappeared. Nine o'clock was striking in the hotel kitchen.

Georges thought it just and reasonable to remonstrate with Pierrotin.
"Hey! my friend; when a man is blessed with such wheels as these

(striking the clumsy tires with his cane) he ought at least to have
the merit of punctuality. The deuce! one doesn't get into that thing

for pleasure; I have business that is devilishly pressing or I
wouldn't trust my bones to it. And that horse, which you call Rougeot,

he doesn't look likely to make up for lost time."
"We are going to harness Bichette while those gentlemen take their

coffee," replied Pierrotin. "Go and ask, you," he said to his porter,
"if Pere Leger is coming with us--"

"Where is your Pere Leger?" asked Georges.
"Over the way, at number 50. He couldn't get a place in the Beaumont

diligence," said Pierrotin, still speaking to his porter and
apparently making no answer to his customer; then he disappeared