Previous  - next

Of these two men, the one was English, the other French; both were tall
and thin, but the latter was sallow as are the southern Provencals,
while the former was ruddy like a Lancashire gentleman.
The Anglo-Norman, formal, cold, grave, parsimonious of gestures
and words, appeared only to speak or gesticulate under
the influence of a spring operating at regular intervals.
The Gaul, on the contrary, lively and petulant, expressed himself
with lips, eyes, hands, all at once, having twenty different
ways of explaining his thoughts, whereas his interlocutor seemed
to have only one, immutably stereotyped on his brain.

The strong contrast they presented would at once have struck the most
superficial observer; but a physiognomist, regarding them closely,
would have defined their particular characteristics by saying,
that if the Frenchman was "all eyes," the Englishman was "all ears."

In fact, the visual apparatus of the one had been singularly
perfected by practice. The sensibility of its retina must
have been as instantaneous as that of those conjurors who
recognize a card merely by a rapid movement in cutting the pack
or by the arrangement only of marks invisible to others.
The Frenchman indeed possessed in the highest degree what may
be called "the memory of the eye."

The Englishman, on the contrary, appeared especially organized
to listen and to hear. When his aural apparatus had been once
struck by the sound of a voice he could not forget it, and after ten
or even twenty years he would have recognized it among a thousand.
His ears, to be sure, had not the power of moving as freely
as those of animals who are provided with large auditory flaps;
but, since scientific men know that human ears possess, in fact,
a very limited power of movement, we should not be far wrong
in affirming that those of the said Englishman became erect,
and turned in all directions while endeavoring to gather
in the sounds, in a manner apparent only to the naturalist.
It must be observed that this perfection of sight and hearing
was of wonderful assistance to these two men in their vocation,
for the Englishman acted as correspondent of the Daily Telegraph,
and the Frenchman, as correspondent of what newspaper,
or of what newspapers, he did not say; and when asked,
he replied in a jocular manner that he corresponded with "his
cousin Madeleine." This Frenchman, however, neath his
careless surface, was wonderfully shrewd and sagacious.
Even while speaking at random, perhaps the better to hide his desire
to learn, he never forgot himself. His loquacity even helped him
to conceal his thoughts, and he was perhaps even more discreet
than his confrere of the Daily Telegraph. Both were present
at this fete given at the New Palace on the night of the 15th
of July in their character of reporters.

It is needless to say that these two men were devoted to their mission
in the world--that they delighted to throw themselves in the track
of the most unexpected intelligence--that nothing terrified or

Previous  - next