Such a crowd! Men with long hair, gentlemen in pegtop trousers, wearing smoking-caps with tassels, smoking long pipes; men in rags, hawkers yelling their wares, blind men tapping their way with their sticks, deaf men blowing penny whistles, grisettes, gamins, poets, painters, gnomes from the Rue du Truand, goblins from Montmartre, Thénard and Claquesons, Fleur de Marie and Mimi Pinson, Bouchardy and Bruyon; skull-like faces, ghost-like faces, faces like roses, paint, satin, squalor, beauty; and all drifting as if blown by the wind of the summer night, drifting under the stars, here in shadow, here in the blaze of the roaring cafés, drifting, drifting, in a double current from and towards the voiceless and gas-spangled Seine. Not in the bazaars of Bagdad, or on the Bardo of Tunis, could you see so fantastic a sight as the Boulevard St. Michel in the year 1869. It fascinated me, and, mixing with the crowd, I drifted half the length of the boulevard, till suddenly I was brought up as if by the blast of a trumpet in my face. By the pavement a man had placed a little carpet, six inches square; on this carpet, lit by the light of a bullseye lantern, two tiny dolls, manipulated by an invisible thread, were wrestling and tumbling, to the edification of a small crowd of interested onlookers. One of these--a man with a violin under his arm, a man with a round, fresh-coloured childish face--I knew at sight. He had not altered in nine years. He was the good angel, the violinist of that troupe of wandering musicians, whose music had held me in the gallery of the Schloss Lichtenberg. I laughed to myself with pleasure as I watched him watching the dolls, all his simple soul absorbed in the sight, his violin under his arm, and a hand in the pocket of his shabby coat, feeling for a coin to pay for the entertainment. He did not know me in the least. How could he connect the child in its nightgown, looking down from the gallery of the castle, with the young dandy who was raising his hat to him in the Boulevard St. Michel? "Excuse me, monsieur," said I, "but I believe I have the pleasure of your acquaintance, though we have never spoken one word to each other." He smiled dubiously and plucked nervously at a violin-string, evidently ransacking memories of beer-gardens and café-chantants to find my face. "You will not remember me," I went on, "but I remember you. Over nine years ago, it was, in Germany, in the Schloss Lichtenberg. You remember the Hunting-Song, the horn----" "Ach Gott!" he cried, slapping himself on the forehead. "The child in the gallery, the one in white----" "Yes," said I; "that was me. You see, I don't forget my friends." He was too astounded to say anything for a moment; the wretched difference our clothes made in us confused his simple mind. Then he wiped his hand with fingers outspread across his broad face. It was just as if he had wiped away his amazement like a veil, exposing the beneficent smile that was his true expression.