We prolonged our stroll for an hour, for, although I did not anticipate any pleasure or profit from continuing the acquaintance, there was yet a certain attraction in his simplicity of manner and in his naïve faith in the value of my influence on his fortunes. Before we parted he expressed again his ability to get me something to do, but I did not credit his statement enough to correct the impression that I was in need of employment. At his earnest solicitation I gave him my address, concealing, as well as I could, my reluctance to encourage an acquaintance which would doubtless prove a burden to me. One day passed, and two, and, on the third morning, the porter showed him to my room. “I have found you work!” he cried, in the first breath. Sure enough, he had been to a Polish acquaintance who knew a countryman, a copyist in the Louvre. This copyist had a superabundance of orders, and was glad to get some one to help him finish them in haste. My gymnast was so much elated over his success at finding occupation for me that I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I was at leisure only while hunting a studio. I therefore promised to go with him to the Louvre some day, but I always found an excuse for not going. For two or three weeks we met at intervals. At various times, thinking he was in want, I pressed him to accept the loan of a few francs; but he always stoutly refused. We went together to his lodging-house, where the landlady, an Englishwoman, who boarded most of the circus people, spoke of her “poor, dear Mr. Nodge,” as she called him, in quite a maternal way, and assured me that he had wanted for nothing, and should not as long as his wound disabled him. In the course of a few days I had gathered from him a complete history of his circus-life, which was full of adventure and hardship. When we met in Turin, he was, as I thought at the time, somewhat of a novice in the circus business, having left his home less than two years before. He had, indeed, been associated as a regular member of the company only a few months, after having served a difficult and wearing apprenticeship. He was born in Koloszvar, where his father was a professor in the university, and there he grew up with three brothers and a sister, in a comfortable home. He always had had a great desire to travel, and, from early childhood, developed a special fondness for gymnastic feats. The thought of a circus made him fairly wild. On rare occasions a travelling show visited this Transylvanian town, and his parents with difficulty restrained him from following the circus away. At last, in 1873, one show, more complete and more brilliant than any one before seen there, came on the newly opened railway, and he, now a man grown, went away with it, unable longer to restrain his passion for the profession. Always accustomed to horses, and already a skilful acrobat, he was immediately accepted by the manager as an apprentice, and, after a season in Roumania and a