d?"

"Why, ride alongside the prince's carriage, giving himself airs and
posing for _son Altesse's_ aide-de-camp. And, following him as fast as
they could get along, a band of asses on donkeys, braying like
_imbeciles_. Well, _bon jour_, Messieurs; after all, it's no business of
mine. I only thought you might care to know."

On the arrival of the band, I learnt afterwards, they were confronted by
four _sergents de ville_, the two original ones having been reinforced.
Gobelot, the man with the brown felt hat, was asked for his passport,
and, not being able to produce it, was looked upon with suspicion and
closely cross-questioned. Dupont rather entered into my joke and let
things go wrong, till it was high time to set them right. Then I was
denounced, and it was not without some difficulty made clear to the
authorities that the informer was the real culprit. So Gobelot the
innocent was only warned to be more careful another time, and my name
is probably inscribed on some black list at the _Prefecture_.

* * * * *

Claude was a most indefatigable worker; as an artist ever severe and
uncompromising, studying on the lines of Ingres and Flandrin, loving a
bird, a stone, a woman for the sake of the outline they imprinted on his
mind, and ever seeking an ideal contour, whether he held the pencil or
the brush. His enthusiasm was quite catching; so under his influence I
soon began to love drawing for its own sake, and we spent many an
evening together studying Dante's stern features from the cast or
working from the living model.

He had inherited his classical predilections from his father, who
himself had started life as an artist, but had found that large
historical landscapes _a la_ Poussin were not easily convertible into
bread and butter, and had therefore wisely abandoned art as a
profession, and had embraced the administrative career, in which he rose
and prospered. His leisure hours he still spent at the easel, but his
canvases were not as large as formerly; in his productions he always
gave me the impression that he could use more emerald and olive greens,
to the exclusion of other colours, on a given space, than any man I had
ever known.

He was quite touching in his love for Claude.

"What I have dreamed of and struggled for in vain," he would say, "that
boy is going to realise. He is born with _du style_. Believe me, my
child, outside _le style_ there is no art. From the time o