"A very rude gentleman?" repeated the wise man in French, narrowly
looking at the girl; "that means, a very fine gentleman who has just
paid you some energetic compliment. But let him come up, my girl," he
added patriarchially.

In a few moments, a swift coquettish step was heard, followed, as if in
chase, by a sharp and manly one. The door opened. Israel was sitting so
that, accidentally, his eye pierced the crevice made by the opening of
the door, which, like a theatrical screen, stood for a moment between
Doctor Franklin and the just entering visitor. And behind that screen,
through the crack, Israel caught one momentary glimpse of a little bit
of by-play between the pretty chambermaid and the stranger. The
vivacious nymph appeared to have affectedly run from him on the
stairs--doubtless in freakish return for some liberal advances--but had
suffered herself to be overtaken at last ere too late; and on the
instant Israel caught sight of her, was with an insincere air of rosy
resentment, receiving a roguish pinch on the arm, and a still more
roguish salute on the cheek.

The next instant both disappeared from the range of the crevice; the
girl departing whence she had come; the stranger--transiently invisible
as he advanced behind the door--entering the room. When Israel now
perceived him again, he seemed, while momentarily hidden, to have
undergone a complete transformation.

He was a rather small, elastic, swarthy man, with an aspect as of a
disinherited Indian Chief in European clothes. An unvanquishable
enthusiasm, intensified to perfect sobriety, couched in his savage,
self-possessed eye. He was elegantly and somewhat extravagantly dressed