week each, when he
was changing his quarters. But sometimes, on a holiday, he would leave by
an excursion train for Dieppe or Havre in order to elevate his mind by
the inspiring sight of the sea.

He was full of that common sense which borders on stupidity. For a long
time he had been living quietly, with economy, temperate through
prudence, chaste by temperament, when suddenly he was assailed by a
terrible apprehension. One evening in the street he suddenly felt an
attack of dizziness which made him fear a stroke of apoplexy. He hastened
to a physician and for five francs obtained the following prescription:

M. X-, fifty-five years old, bachelor, clerk. Full-blooded,
danger of apoplexy. Cold-water applications, moderate nourishment,
plenty of exercise. MONTELLIER, M.D.

Patissot was greatly distressed, and for a whole month, in his office, he
kept a wet towel wrapped around his head like a turban while the water
continually dripped on his work, which he would have to do over again.
Every once in a while he would read the prescription over, probably in
the hope of finding some hidden meaning, of penetrating into the secret
thought of the physician, and also of discovering some forms of exercise
which, might perhaps make him immune from apoplexy.

Then he consulted his friends, showing them the fateful paper. One
advised boxing. He immediately hunted up an instructor, and, on the first
day, he received a punch in the nose which immediately took away all his
ambition in this direction. Single-stick made him gasp for breath, and he
grew so stiff from fencing that for two days and two nights he could not
get sleep. Then a bright idea struck him. It was to walk, every Sunday,
to some suburb of Paris and even to certain places in the capital which
he did not know.

For a whole week his mind was occupied with thoughts of the equipment
which you need for these excursions; and on Sunday, the 30th of May, he
began his preparations. After reading all the extraordinary
advertisements which poor, blind and halt beggars distribute on the
street corners, he began to visit the stores with the intention of
looking about him only and of buying later on. First of all, he visited a
so-called American shoe store, where heavy travelling shoes were shown
him. The clerk brought out a kind of ironclad contrivance, studded with
spikes like a harrow, which he claimed to be made from Rocky Mountain
bison skin. He was so carried