frighten me to see; and he in turn, when he praises my claret, little dreams of the carking care that poisons it upon my palate, and robs it of all its aroma.  Perhaps the laughter-loving painter himself had his own little tragedy locked up in some secret corner of the heart that seemed to beat so lightly under that braided blouse of Palais Royal cut and Quartier Latin fashion!  Who could tell?  And of what use would it be, if it were told?  Smiles carry one through the world more agreeably than tears, and if the skeleton is only kept decently out of sight in its own unsuspected closet, so much the better for you and me, and society at large.

Dinner over, and the serious waiter dismissed with the dessert and the empty bottles, we sat by the open window for a long time, sipping our coffee, smoking our cigars, and watching the busy life of the Boulevard below.  There the shops were all alight and the passers-by more numerous than by day.  Carriages were dashing along, full of opera-goers and ball-room beauties.  On the pavement just under our window were seated the usual crowd of Boulevard idlers, sipping their al fresco absinthe, and grog-au-vin. In the very next room, divided from us by only a slender partition, was a noisy party of young men and girls.  We could hear their bursts of merriment, the chinking of their glasses as they pledged one another, the popping of the champagne corks, and almost the very jests that passed from lip to lip.  Presently a band came and played at the corner of an adjoining street.  All was mirth, all was life, all was amusement and dissipation both in-doors and out-of-doors, in the “care-charming” city of Paris on that pleasant September night; and we, of course, were gay and noisy, like our neighbors.  Dalrymple and Mueller could scarcely be called new acquaintances.  They had met some few times at the Chicards, and also, some years before, in Rome.  What stories they told of artists whom they had known!  What fun they made of Academic dons and grave professors high in authority!  What pictures they drew, of life in Rome—­in Vienna—­in Paris!  Though we had no ladies of our party and were only three in number, I am not sure that the merry-makers in the next room laughed any louder or oftener than we!

At length the clock on the mantelpiece warned us that it was already half-past nine, and that we had been three hours at dinner.  It was clearly time to vary the evening’s amusement in some way or other, and the only question was what next to do?  Should we go to a billiard-room?  Or to the Salle Valentinois?  Or to some of the cheap theatres on the Boulevard du Temple?  Or to the Tableaux Vivants?  Or the Cafe des Aveugles?  Or take a drive round by the Champs Elysees in an open fly?

At length Mueller remembered that some fellow-students were giving a party that evening, and offered to introduce us.

“It is up five pairs of stairs, in the Quartier Latin,” said he; “but thoroughly jolly—­all students and grisettes.  They’ll be delighted to see us.”