and words,
appeared only to speak or gesticulate under the influence of a spring
operating at regular intervals. The Gaul, on the contrary, lively and
petulant, expressed himself with lips, eyes, hands, all at once,
having twenty different ways of explaining his thoughts, whereas his
interlocutor seemed to have only one, immutably stereotyped on his
brain.

The strong contrast they presented would at once have struck the most
superficial observer; but a physiognomist, regarding them closely, would
have defined their particular characteristics by saying, that if the
Frenchman was "all eyes," the Englishman was "all ears."

In fact, the visual apparatus of the one had been singularly
perfected by practice. The sensibility of its retina must have been as
instantaneous as that of those conjurors who recognize a card merely by
a rapid movement in cutting the pack or by the arrangement only of
marks invisible to others. The Frenchman indeed possessed in the highest
degree what may be called "the memory of the eye."

The Englishman, on the contrary, appeared especially organized to listen
and to hear. When his aural apparatus had been once struck by the sound
of a voice he could not forget it, and after ten or even twenty years he
would have recognized it among a thousand. His ears, to be sure, had not
the power of moving as freely as those of animals who are provided with
large auditory flaps; but, since scientific men know that human ears
possess, in fact, a very limited power of movement, we should not be far
wrong in affirming that those of the said Englishman became erect, and
turned in all directions while endeavoring to gather in the sounds, in
a manner apparent only to the naturalist. It must be observed that this
perfection of sight and hearing was of wonderful assistance to these two
men in their vocation, for the Englishman acted as correspondent of the
Daily Telegraph, and the Frenchman, as correspondent of what newspaper,
or of what newspapers, he did not say; and when asked, he replied in a
jocular manner that he corresponded with "his cousin Madeleine." This
Frenchman, however, neath his careless surface, was wonderfully shrewd
and sagacious. Even while speaking at random, perhaps the better to hide
his desire to learn, he never forgot himself. His loquacity even helped
him to conceal his thoughts, and he was perhaps even more discreet than
his confrere of the Daily Telegraph. Both were present at this fete