“COME, Joannetti,” I said, “hang up this picture.” He had helped to clean it, and had no more notion than the man in the moon what had produced our chapter on the portrait. He it was, who, of his own accord, held out the wet sponge, and who, through that seemingly unimportant act, caused my soul to travel a hundred millions of leagues in a moment of time. Instead of restoring it to its place, he held it to examine it in his turn. A difficulty, a problem, gave him an inquisitive air, which I did not fail to observe.

“Well, and what fault do you find with that portrait?” said I.

“O, none at all, sir.”

“But come now, you have some remark to make, I know.”

He placed it upright on one of the wings of my bureau, and then drawing back a little, “I wish, sir,” he said, “that you would explain how it is that in whatever part of the room one may be, this portrait always watches you. In the morning, when I am making your bed, the face turns towards me; and if I move toward the window, it still looks at me, and follows me with its eyes as I go about.”

“So that, Joannetti,” said I, “if my room were full of people, that beautiful lady would eye every one, on all sides, at once.”

“Just so, sir.”

“She would smile on every comer and goer, just as she would on me?”

Joannetti gave no further answer. I stretched myself in my easy-chair, and, hanging down my head, gave myself up to the most serious meditations. What a ray of light fell upon me! Alack, poor lover! While thou pinest away, far from thy mistress, at whose side another perhaps, has already replaced thee; whilst thou fixest thy longing eyes on her portrait, imagining that at least in picture, thou art the sole being she deigns to regard,—the perfidious image, as faithless as the original, bestows its glances on all around, and smiles on every one alike!

And in this behold a moral resemblance between certain portraits and their originals, which no philosopher, no painter, no observer, had before remarked.

I go on from discovery to discovery.