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116 crockery and uncomfortable chairs. But he cared for nothing that was not a hundred years old, and the pretty things in the hairdresser's window all bore the stamp of the latest Parisian manufacture—were part and parcel of that modern rubbish which he so cordially despised. What, then, had so forcibly arrested his attention? Was the poor fellow thinking of buying a new chignon or a solitary pendent curl for the object of his affections? This could hardly be, for to my almost certain knowledge his affections had no object save the faded crockery and the singular chairs I have mentioned. I had, indeed, more than once thought it a pity that he should not interest himself in some attractive little woman, for he might end by marrying her; and that would be a blessing, inasmuch as she would probably take measures for his being punctual when he was asked out to dinner. I tapped on the edge of the little railing which served as my window-guard, but the noise of the street prevented this admonition from reaching his ear. He was decidedly quite too absorbed. Then I ventured to hiss at him in the manner of the Latin races—a mode of address to which I have always had a lively aversion, but which, it must be confessed, proceeding from Latin lips, reaches its destination in cases in which a nobler volume of sound will stop halfway. Still, like the warrior's widow in Tennyson's song, he neither