urns, was in harmony with the singular outline of
his features, with his wide, flexible mouth, hardened into a smile. His
forehead, knit with violent annoyance, had a stamp of doom. Is not the
forehead the most prophetic feature of a man? When the stranger's
brow expressed passion the furrows formed in it were terrible in their
strength and energy; but when he recovered his calmness, so easily
upset, it beamed with a luminous grace which gave great attractiveness
to a countenance in which joy, grief, love, anger, or scorn blazed out
so contagiously that the coldest man could not fail to be impressed.

He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer-window of the
loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not observe the apparition of
three laughing faces, pink and white and chubby, but as vulgar as the
face of Commerce as it is seen in sculpture on certain monuments. These
three faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs floating
among the clouds that surround God the Father. The apprentices snuffed
up the exhalations of the street with an eagerness that showed how hot
and poisonous the atmosphere of their garret must be. After pointing to
the singular sentinel, the most jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices
retired and came back holding an instrument whose hard metal pipe is now
superseded by a leather tube; and they all grinned with mischief as they
looked down on the loiterer, and sprinkled him with a fine white
shower of which the scent proved that three chins had just been shaved.
Standing on tiptoe, in the farthest corner of their loft, to enjoy
their victim's rage, the lads ceased laughing on seeing the haughty
indifference with which the young man shook his cloak, and the
intense contempt expressed by his face as he glanced up at the empty
window-frame.

At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners,
of which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy
panes it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long
waiting. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the
white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill
of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence.
Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here
and there through little openings left by her movements in sleep. No
expression of embarrassm