“She would smile on every comer and goer, just as she would on me?” Joannetti gave no further answer. I stretched myself in my easy-chair, and, hanging down my head, gave myself up to the most serious meditations. What a ray of light fell upon me! Alack, poor lover! While thou pinest away, far from thy mistress, at whose side another perhaps, has already replaced thee; whilst thou fixest thy longing eyes on her portrait, imagining that at least in picture, thou art the sole being she deigns to regard,--the perfidious image, as faithless as the original, bestows its glances on all around, and smiles on every one alike! And in this behold a moral resemblance between certain portraits and their originals, which no philosopher, no painter, no observer, had before remarked. I go on from discovery to discovery. [Illustration: VESSIER GUILLAUME] XVI. _Solution._ Joannetti remained in the attitude I have described, awaiting the explanation he had asked of me. I withdrew my head from the folds of my travelling dress, into which I had thrust it that I might meditate more at my ease; and after a moment’s silence, to enable me to collect my thoughts after the reflections I had just made, I said, turning my arm-chair toward him,-- “Do you not see that as a picture is a plane surface, the rays of light proceeding from each point on that surface ...?” At that explanation, Joannetti stretched his eyes to their very widest, while he kept his mouth half open. These two movements of the human face express, according to the famous Le Brun, the highest pitch of astonishment. It was, without doubt, my _animal_, that had undertaken this dissertation, while my soul was well aware that Joannetti knew nothing whatever about plane surfaces and rays of light. The prodigious dilatation of his eyelids caused me to draw back. I ensconced my head in the collar of my travelling coat, and this so effectively that I well-nigh succeeded in altogether hiding it. I determined to dine where I was. The morning was far advanced, and another step in my room would have delayed my dinner until night-fall. I let myself slip to the edge of my chair, and putting both feet on the mantel-piece, patiently awaited my meal. This was a most comfortable attitude; indeed, it would be difficult to find another possessing so many advantages, and so well adapted to the inevitable sojourns of a long voyage.