he met his comrade at the designated inn; and the
pleasures of society and solitude combined to fill the day. The
_Arethusa_ carried in his knapsack the works of Charles of Orleans, and
employed some of the hours of travel in the concoction of English
roundels. In this path he must thus have preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson,
Mr. Henley, and all contemporary roundeleers; but, for good reasons, he
will be the last to publish the result. The _Cigarette_ walked burthened
with a volume of Michelet. And both these books, it will be seen, played
a part in the subsequent adventure.

The _Arethusa_ was unwisely dressed. He is no precisian in attire; but
by all accounts he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having
set forth, indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable
spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head he wore a smoking-cap of Indian
work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of
an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed
coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and
leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally
lean; and his face is not, like those of happier mortals, a certificate.
For years he could not pass a frontier, or visit a bank, without
suspicion; the police everywhere, but in his native city, looked askance
upon him; and (although I am sure it will not be credited) he is
actually denied admittance to the casino of Monte Carlo. If you will
imagine him dressed as above, stooping under his knapsack, walking
nearly five miles an hour with the folds of the ready-made trousers
fluttering about his spindle shanks, and still looking eagerly round him
as if in terror of pursuit--the figure, when realized, is far from
reassuring. When Villon journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant valley)
to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder if he had not something of the same
appearance. Something of the same preoccupation he had beyond a doubt,
for he too must have tinkered verses as he walked, with more success
than his successor. And if he had anything like the same inspiring
weather, the same nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding
down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the
wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare
inn-chamber--the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of
noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon eves--and above all, if