He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his air and his movements; not slight of frame, but spare enough to disguise the strength and endurance which belong to sinews and thews of steel, freed from all superfluous flesh, broad across the shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl; it was now clipped short, and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of its colour and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore neither beard nor mustache, and the darkness of his hair was contrasted by a clear fairness of complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, and eyes of that rare gray tint which has in it no shade of blue,--peculiar eyes, which give a very distinct character to the face. The man must have been singularly handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in his forty- seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind of comeliness. The form of the features and the contour of the face were those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier days; but the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care and sorrow between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed lengthened, and the features had become more salient. Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had seen him before, and could not remember where or when; but at all events he recognized at the first glance a man of rank and of the great world. "Pray be seated, Monsieur," he said, resuming his own easy-chair. The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend of his head, drew his chair near to the financier's, stretched his limbs with the ease of a man making himself at home, and fixing his calm bright eyes quietly on Louvier, said, with a bland smile,-- "My dear old friend, do you not remember me? You are less altered than I am." Louvier stared hard and long; his lip fell, his cheek paled, and at last he faltered out, "Ciel! is it possible! Victor, the Vicomte de Mauleon?" "At your service, my dear Louvier." There was a pause; the financier was evidently confused and embarrassed, and not less evidently the visit of the "dear old friend" was unwelcome. "Vicomte," he said at last, "this is indeed a surprise; I thought you had long since quitted Paris for good." "'L'homme propose,' etc. I have returned, and mean to enjoy the rest of my days in the metropolis of the Graces and the Pleasures. What though we are not so young as we were, Louvier,--we have more vigour in us than the new generation; and though it may no longer befit us to renew the gay carousals of old, life has still excitements as vivid for the social temperament and ambitious mind. Yes, the _roi des viveurs_ returns to Paris for a more solid throne than he filled before." "Are you serious?" "As serious as the French gayety will permit one to be."