es of former days had lost their freshness, and his
youthful dramas appeared to him to be childish. He would have to write
others, and, by Jove! he felt himself capably of doing it, for he had
plenty of ideas and plans in his head, and he could easily demolish many
successful writers if he chose to try! But then, the difficulty was, how
to set about it, and to find the necessary leisure and time for thought.
He had his daily bread to gain, and something besides: his coffee, his
game of cards and other little requirements; and the incessant writing
article upon article barely sufficed for that, and so days and years
went by, and Machin was Machin still.

She also longed for former years, and surely it could not be so very
hard to find a lover to start her on her career once more, for many of
her female friends, who were not nearly so nice as she was, had
unearthed one, so why should not she be equally fortunate? But there,
her youth had gone and she had lost all her chances; other women had
their fancy men, and she had to take them on, every day at reduced
prices, so that she was reduced from taking up with any man she met, and
so day after day and months and years passed, and the prostitute
_No-matter-who_ had remained the prostitute _No-matter-who_.

Often, in a fit of despondency, he used to say to himself, thinking of
some one who had succeeded in life: "But, after all, I am cleverer than
that fellow." And she always said to herself, when she got up to her
miserable, daily round, when she thought of such and such a woman, who
was now settled in life: "In what respect is that woman better than I
am?"

And Machin, who was nearly sixty, and whose head was bald under his
shabby tall hat, and whose gray beard was half-buried in a high shirt
collar, who had dull eyes, an unpleasant mouth and yellow teeth, was
mad with his fellow men, while the prostitute _No-matter-who_, with
thin hair over her pads, and with a false plait, with her linen of a
doubtful color, and with her unfashionable dress, which she had
evidently bought at a _reach-me-down_ shop, was enraged with society.

Ah! Those miserable, dark hours, and the wretched awakenings! And that
evening he was more than usually wretched, as he had just lost all his
pay for the next month, that miserable screw which he earned so hardly
by almost editing the newspaper, for three hundred francs a month, in a
brothel.

And that evening she was in a state of semi-stupidity