THE NEW HYPERION.

From Paris to Marly by way of the Rhine.

VI.—­Shall Auld acquaintance be forgot?

My first dinner in the avenue of Ettlingen followed upon the twelve-barreled bath, but was far from being so glacial a, refreshment.  As I descended, quite pink and glowing, I found eight or ten individuals in the dining-room.  They were French and Belgians, and exchanged a lively conversation in half a dozen provincial accents.  The servants too talked French in levying on the cook for provisions:  for this, as I have since learned, the domestics of my snug little boarding-house were deemed somewhat pretentious by the serving-people of the vicinity, who considered the tongue of Paris a sort of court language, for circulation among aristocrats only, and supposed that even in France the hired folk all talked German.  My reception at the cheerful board was as cordial as possible.

[Illustration:  The register.]

Placed opposite me, our young hostess was looking in my direction with an intentness that struck me as singular.  My passport was uppermost in my mind.  I was not, however, very uneasy, for the reply of Sylvester Berkley would soon arrive and put an official seal upon my standing.  It occurred to me, however, that I was a traveler accompanied by no other baggage than a tin box and an umbrella, and introduced by a coachman who had no reason whatever for forming lofty notions of my respectability.  The landlady, whom I had scarcely seen on my arrival, was pretty, neat and quick, and an argument suggested itself that seemed adapted to her station and habits.  I was base enough to take out my watch, a very fine Poitevin, and make an advertisement of that pledge under pretence of comparing time with the mantel-clock.  This precious manoeuvre appeared quite successful.

Very soon my ideas of apprehension and defiance were followed by other thoughts of a very different kind.  The expression of the youthful housekeeper was not only softened in continuing to watch me, but it took on a look of great kindness and good-humor—­a look that the finest watch in the world would never have inspired.  On my own side I furtively examined this gentle yet scrutinizing physiognomy.  Surely those gentle glances and my own faded old eyes were not entire strangers.

When Winckelmann was filling the villa Albani with antiques, it often happened to him to clasp a fair Greek head in his arms and go pottering along from torso to torso till he could find a shoulder fit to support his lovely burden.  Such was my exercise with this pleasant head in its neat cambric cap; but in place of consulting my memory with the proper coolness, I am afraid I questioned my heart.