s if he had been sitting all the time at the
board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine
monastery. To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn or patched, with
barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; you
are tempted to hail him and fling him a shilling. To-morrow all
powdered, curled, in a fine coat, he marches past with head erect
and open mien, and you would almost take him for a decent worthy
creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth, downcast or
sad, just as things may go. His first care in a morning, when he
gets up, is to know where he will dine; and after dinner, he begins
to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of
its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret that he has, unless
the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away
from him; or else he slinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the
town, where he waits for daybreak over a piece of bread and a mug
of beer. When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes
happens, he has recourse either to a hackney carriage belonging to
a friend, or to the coachman of some man of quality, who gives him
a bed on the straw beside the horses. In the morning, he still has
bits of his mattress in his hair. If the weather is mild, he
measures the Champs Elysees all night long. With the day he
reappears in the town, dressed over night for the morrow, and from
the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week.

I do not rate these originals very highly. Other people make
familiar acquaintances, and even friends, of them. They detain me
perhaps once in a twelvemonth, if I happen to fall in with them.
Their character stands out from the rest of the world, and breaks
that wearisome uniformity which our bringing-up, our social
conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have introduced. If one of
them makes his appearance in a company, he is a piece of leaven
which ferments and restores to each a portion of his natural
individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, invites to praise or
blame; he is the means of bringing out the truth, he gives honest
people a chance of showing themselves, he unmasks the rogues; this
is the time when a man of sense listens, and distinguishes his
company.

I had known my present ma