e of the purchase some three
years back. The roomy garments failed to disguise the lean proportions
of the wearer, due apparently rather to constitution than to a
Pythagorean regimen, for the worthy man was endowed with thick lips
and a sensual mouth; and when he smiled, displayed a set of white teeth
which would have done credit to a shark.

A shawl-waistcoat, likewise of black cloth, was supplemented by a white
under-waistcoat, and yet again beneath this gleamed the edge of a red
knitted under-jacket, to put you in mind of Garat's five waistcoats.
A huge white muslin stock with a conspicuous bow, invented by some
exquisite to charm "the charming sex" in 1809, projected so far above
the wearer's chin that the lower part of his face was lost, as it were,
in a muslin abyss. A silk watch-guard, plaited to resemble the keepsakes
made of hair, meandered down the shirt front and secured his watch from
the improbable theft. The greenish coat, though older by some three
years than the breeches, was remarkably neat; the black velvet collar
and shining metal buttons, recently renewed, told of carefulness which
descended even to trifles.

The particular manner of fixing the hat on the occiput, the triple
waistcoat, the vast cravat engulfing the chin, the gaiters, the metal
buttons on the greenish coat,--all these reminiscences of Imperial
fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of
the coquetry of the Incroyable--with an indescribable finical something
in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness
in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that recalled
Jacob's spindle-legged furniture.

At first sight, moreover, you set him down either for the gentleman by
birth fallen a victim to some degrading habit, or for the man of small
independent means whose expenses are calculated to such a nicety that
the breakage of a windowpane, a rent in a coat, or a visit from the
philanthropic pest who asks you for subscriptions to a charity, absorbs
the whole of a month's little surplus of pocket-money. If you had seen
him that afternoon, you would have wondered how that grotesque face came
to be lighted up with a smile; usually, surely, it must have worn
the dispirited, passive look of the obscure toiler condemned to labor
without ceasing for the barest necessaries of life. Yet when you
noticed that the odd-looking old man was carrying some object (evidently
precious) in his rig