Secretly respecting and admiring him for what he had just said, I promised that his directions should be implicitly followed, and began to work immediately.  Before I had pursued my occupation for ten minutes, the conversation began to flag, and the usual obstacle to my success with a sitter gradually set itself up between us.  Quite unconsciously, of course, Mr. Faulkner stiffened his neck, shut his month, and contracted his eyebrows—­evidently under the impression that he was facilitating the process of taking his portrait by making his face as like a lifeless mask as possible.  All traces of his natural animated expression were fast disappearing, and he was beginning to change into a heavy and rather melancholy-looking man.

This complete alteration was of no great consequence so long as I was only engaged in drawing the outline of his face and the general form of his features.  I accordingly worked on doggedly for more than an hour—­then left off to point my chalks again, and to give my sitter a few minutes’ rest.  Thus far the likeness had not suffered through Mr. Faulkner’s unfortunate notion of the right way of sitting for his portrait; but the time of difficulty, as I well knew, was to come.  It was impossible for me to think of putting any expression into the drawing unless I could contrive some means, when he resumed his chair, of making him look like himself again.  “I will talk to him about foreign parts,” thought I, “and try if I can’t make him forget that he is sitting for his picture in that way.”

While I was pointing my chalks Mr. Faulkner was walking up and down the room.  He chanced to see the portfolio I had brought with me leaning against the wall, and asked if there were any sketches in it.  I told him there were a few which I had made during my recent stay in Paris; “In Paris?” he repeated, with a look of interest; “may I see them?”

I gave him the permission he asked as a matter of course.  Sitting down, he took the portfolio on his knee, and began to look through it.  He turned over the first five sketches rapidly enough; but when he came to the sixth, I saw his face flush directly, and observed that he took the drawing out of the portfolio, carried it to the window, and remained silently absorbed in the contemplation of it for full five minutes.  After that, he turned round to me, and asked very anxiously if I had any objection to part with that sketch.

It was the least interesting drawing of the collection—­merely a view in one of the streets running by the backs of the houses in the Palais Royal.  Some four or five of these houses were comprised in the view, which was of no particular use to me in any way; and which was too valueless, as a work of art, for me to think of selling it.  I begged his acceptance of it at once.  He thanked me quite warmly; and then, seeing that I looked a little surprised at the odd selection he had made from my sketches, laughingly asked me if I could guess why he had been so anxious to become possessed of the view which I had given him?