a bird.

When Godefroid appeared, the lady's face turned crimson; she trembled,
started, and covered her face with her white hands.

Any woman might have shared her agitation at the sight of this youth of
about twenty, of a form and stature so slender that at a first glance he
might have been taken for a mere boy, or a young girl in disguise. His
black cap--like the _beret_ worn by the Basque people--showed a brow
as white as snow, where grace and innocence shone with an expression
of divine sweetness--the light of a soul full of faith. A poet's
fancy would have seen there the star which, in some old tale, a mother
entreats the fairy godmother to set on the forehead of an infant
abandoned, like Moses, to the waves. Love lurked in the thousand fair
curls that fell over his shoulders. His throat, truly a swan's throat,
was white and exquisitely round. His blue eyes, bright and liquid,
mirrored the sky. His features and the mould of his brow were refined
and delicate enough to enchant a painter. The bloom of beauty, which
in a woman's face causes men such indescribable delight, the exquisite
purity of outline, the halo of light that bathes the features we love,
were here combined with a masculine complexion, and with strength as
yet but half developed, in the most enchanting contrast. His was one of
those melodious countenances which even when silent speak and attract
us. And yet, on marking it attentively, the incipient blight might have
been detected which comes of a great thought or a passion, the faint
yellow tinge that made him seem like a young leaf opening to the sun.

No contrast could be greater or more startling than that seen in the
companionship of these two men. It was like seeing a frail and graceful
shrub that has grown from the hollow trunk of some gnarled willow,
withered by age, blasted by lightning, standing decrepit; one of those
majestic trees that painters love; the trembling sapling takes shelter
there from storms. One was a god, the other was an angel; one the poet
that feels, the other the poet that expresses--a prophet in sorrow, a
levite in prayer.

They went out together without speaking.

"Did you mark how he called him to him?" cried the sergeant of the watch
when the footsteps of the couple were no longer audible on the strand.
"Are not they a demon and his familiar?"

"Phooh!" puffed Jacqueline. "I felt smothered! I never marked our two
lodgers so carefully. 'Tis a bad thing for us wo