Caught in the Act.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1733, 25 October 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

Caught in the Act.

j A Boy's Aclyenture in Paris, I BY DiVID KEB. One fine May morning between forty and I fifty years ago a little French boot-blaok was ! standing at the entrance of the Pont Neuf, | one of the Onset o! the many bridges that erosa the Ssia3 between the two great divisions oi Paris. The boy was watching for customers, but there was none to be had yet. for it was too esr-ly. At length, finding nothing else to j do, he took a piece o*. chalu from the ono un- | corn pocket that he possessed, End bsgan to sketch a face upon the stone parapet of the bridge. A very strange laca it was, very broad across tho jaws, And narrowing as it sloped ' apivsnJ, co than whsS with iia curious shspe, I and wbfts with the pointed tuft of hair that I Btood up from the high nsrrow forehead, it looked at a little distance exactly like an enormous psar. But it was plain that this was the likeness of some real man, and that the boy was immensely arnased at it, for he cbuckied to himself all the time he was working, and more than once laughed outright. So completely was 119 taken up with hi 3 picture (which was now very nearly finished), that he was unconscious that somebody else was very much taken up with it too. ] A stout gray-haired old gentleman, very plainly dressed in a faded brown ooat and shabby hat, and er-rrying a cotton umbrella under hi« uvm, had come solily across tha road, slipped up behind the unconscious j artiss, end was looking at tha pear-like face I on the wall with a grin of silent amusement. A.ud well he might, for, Birauga to say, his own iaea v?&9 tho vc*y image of thui; ■which the hoy was sketching no eagedj,-. The quser psai-shaped het\<3, the large heavy features, the tuft o£ hair on the forehead, and evan the sly cxpres^cn of the small h*li-&hufc eye?, were alike in every point. Had the iitt'a arcist noft had bis back turned, one might; have though.fr shat he was drawing this old maa'a portrait from life. But ju3t as the boy was in f.ho height of his abstraction, and the single looker- on in the height of his enjoyment, the old gentlernau happened to snesze suddenly, and the sketcher turned round with a start. The moment he oaugbfc sight of the old fellow standing bahind him he netered a faint ory of tenor, and Gt&ggoiecl baok agamst tha ■ wall, looking frightened out of hig wits. j "The King I" muttered he, in a tons as it \ I tho words choked him. • i "Himself, at your service," answered tho old gentleman, who was anaeed ho other shan King Louia Philippe of France. "It j seems that I'va come up just io nimo tv servo as a model. Go on, pray; don't let roe intarrupt you." The boy's first irapuho was to take to bis heels a» once ; but t,here wa=3 a kindly twinkle in the Kit-g'a small gray tyesv-'hich pave him couvace, and looking slyly f com sho pear-like j head to the royal model, ha tfp,id, " Weil, | your Majesty, I didn't mean to •:t!sk«i fun o* you; butiit zViike you — isn't, it, now?" "Very like indeed." said tba King, laughing, '• and I oaly wish tha pnara in my garden \ would grotv Jjolf ss b!-? ad t3iai ono of yours, j Howevei*, I'm &lr?,'i& I havea'c tirco io sisuc? fitill and be eketohed jiaafe no?/, co I'il give you a likeness of myself" — putting s gold twenty-franc piece (which was stamped with j the King's head) info the boy's brown hand I — " to copy as your leisure." Years later, when King Louis Philippe had been dethroned and driven out of France, a rising young French portrait-painter used to tell his friends that the first portrait for whioh he had ever been paid was that of the King himself, and he declared that " the old man was not such a bad fellow, after all."