marbles
and bronzes spoke to him especially to-day; the glazed garden, not
florally rich, with its new productions alternating with perfunctory
plants and its queer, damp smell, partly the odour of plastic clay, of
the studios of sculptors, put forth the voice of old associations, of
other visits, of companionships now ended--an insinuating eloquence
which was at the same time somehow identical with the general sharp
contagion of Paris. There was youth in the air, and a multitudinous
newness, for ever reviving, and the diffusion of a hundred talents,
ingenuities, experiments. The summer clouds made shadows on the roof of
the great building; the white images, hard in their crudity, spotted the
place with provocations; the rattle of plates at the restaurant sounded
sociable in the distance, and our young man congratulated himself more
than ever that he had not missed his chance. He felt how it would help
him to settle something. At the moment he made this reflexion his eye
fell upon a person who appeared--just in the first glimpse--to carry out
the idea of help. He uttered a lively ejaculation, which, however, in
its want of finish, Biddy failed to understand; so pertinent, so
relevant and congruous, was the other party to this encounter.

The girl's attention followed her brother's, resting with it on a young
man who faced them without seeing them, engaged as he was in imparting
to two companions his ideas about one of the works exposed to view. What
Biddy remarked was that this young man was fair and fat and of the
middle stature; he had a round face and a short beard and on his crown a
mere reminiscence of hair, as the fact that he carried his hat in his
hand permitted to be observed. Bridget Dormer, who was quick, placed him
immediately as a gentleman, but as a gentleman unlike any other
gentleman she had ever seen. She would have taken him for very foreign
but that the words proceeding from his mouth reached her ear and imposed
themselves as a rare variety of English. It was not that a foreigner
might not have spoken smoothly enough, nor yet that the speech of this
young man was not smooth. It had in truth a conspicuous and aggressive
perfection, and Biddy was sure no mere learner would have ventured to
play such tricks with the tongue. He seemed to draw rich effects and
wandering airs from it--to modulate and manipulate it as he would have
done a musical instrument. Her view of the gentleman's companions was
less op