A DINNER AT THE MAISON DOREE AND AN EVENING PARTY IN THE QUARTIER LATIN.

The most genial of companions was our new acquaintance, Franz Mueller, the art-student.  Light-hearted, buoyant, unassuming, he gave his animal spirits full play, and was the life of our little dinner.  He had more natural gayety than generally belongs to the German character, and his good-temper was inexhaustible.  He enjoyed everything; he made the best of everything; he saw food for laughter in everything.  He was always amused, and therefore was always amusing.  Above all, there was a spontaneity in his mirth which acted upon others as a perpetual stimulant.  He was in short, what the French call a bon garcon, and the English a capital fellow; easy without assurance, comic without vulgarity, and, as Sydney Smith wittily hath it—­“a great number of other things without a great number of other things.”

Upon Dalrymple, who had been all day silent, abstracted, and unlike his usual self, this joyous influence acted like a tonic.  As entertainer, he was bound to exert himself, and the exertion did him good.  He threw off his melancholy; and with the help, possibly, of somewhat more than his usual quantity of wine, entered thoroughly into the passing joyousness of the hour.  What a recherche, luxurious extravagant little dinner it was, that evening at the Maison Doree!  We had a charming little room overlooking the Boulevard, furnished with as much looking-glass, crimson-velvet, gilding, and arabesque painting as could be got together within the space of twelve-feet by eight.  Our wine came to table in a silver cooler that Cellini might have wrought.  Our meats were served upon porcelain that would have driven Palissy to despair.  We had nothing that was in season, except game, and everything that was out; which, by-the-way, appears to be our modern criterion of excellence with respect to a dinner.  Finally, we were waited upon by the most imposing of waiters—­a waiter whose imperturbable gravity was not to be shaken by any amount of provocation, and whose neckcloth alone was sufficient to qualify him for the church.

How merry we were!  How Mueller tormented that diplomatic waiter!  What stories we told! what puns we made!  What brilliant things we said, or fancied we said, over our Chambertin and Johannisberger!  Mueller knew nothing of the substratum of sadness underlying all that jollity.  He little thought how heavy Dalrymple’s strong heart had been that morning.  He had no idea that my friend and I were to part on the morrow, for months or years, as the case might be—­he to carry his unrest hither and thither through distant lands; I to remain alone in a strange city, pursuing a distasteful study, and toiling onward to a future without fascination or hope.  But, as the glass seals tell us, “such is life.”  We are all mysteries to one another.  The pleasant fellow whom I invite to dinner because he amuses me, carries a scar on his soul which it would