r a long time before sitting down, and
took it off and put it on again several times following, and at last
asked his friend, the lady at the bar, who was watching him with
interest, whether she thought it suited him.

Two or three times a year he went to the theater, and in the summer he
sometimes spent his evenings at one of the open air concerts in the
_Champs-Elysees_. He brought back from them some airs which ran in his
head for several weeks, and which he even hummed, beating time with his
foot, while he was drinking his beer, and so the years followed each
other, slow, monotonous and short, because they were quite uneventful.

He did not feel them glide past him. He went on towards death without
fear or agitation, sitting at a table in a _cafe_, and only the great
glass against which he rested his head, which was every day becoming
balder, reflected the ravages of time which flies and devours men, poor
men.

He only very rarely now thought of the terrible drama which had wrecked
his life, for twenty years had passed since that terrible evening, but
the life he had led since then had worn him out, and the landlord of his
cafe would often say to him: "You ought to pull yourself together a
little, Monsieur Parent; you should get some fresh air and go into the
country; I assure you that you have changed very much within the last
few months." And when his customer had gone out, he used to say to the
barmaid: "That poor Monsieur Parent is booked for another world; it is
no good never to go out of Paris. Advise him to go out of town for a day
occasionally; he has confidence in you. It is nice weather, and will do
him good." And she, full of pity and good will for such a regular
customer, said to Parent every day: "Come, Monsieur, make up your mind
to get a little fresh air; it is so charming in the country when the
weather is fine. Oh! If I could, I would spend my life there."

And she told him her dreams, the simple and poetical dreams of all the
poor girls who are shut up from one year's end to the other in a shop
and who see the noisy life of the streets go while they think of the
calm and pleasant life in the country, of life under the trees, under
the bright sun shining on the meadows, of deep woods and clear rivers,
of cows lying in the grass, and of all the different flowers, blue, red,
yellow, purple, lilac, pink and white, which are so pretty, so fresh, so
sweet, all the wild flowers which one picks as one w