ooms, and went into the concert. It
became my habit after that to watch for him. When he sat in the Place I
could see him from the window of my room. The chief puzzle to me was the
matter of his nationality.

His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather; his
jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows in his
cheeks. There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes were brown;
and little white moustaches were brushed up from the corners of his lips.
The back of his head bulged out above the lines of his lean neck and
high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped quite close. In the
Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met an Englishman, almost
his counterpart in features--but somehow very different! This old fellow
had nothing of the other's alert, autocratic self-sufficiency. He was
quiet and undemonstrative, without looking, as it were, insulated against
shocks and foreign substances. He was certainly no Frenchman. His eyes,
indeed, were brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown
sensual eye of the Frenchman. An American? But was ever an American so
passive? A German? His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a
modest, almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic. Nothing seemed
to fit him. I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."

Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether. In the same month,
however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and going one
day to the concert found myself seated next this same old fellow. The
orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my neighbour was
asleep, snoring softly. He was dressed in the same grey suit, with the
same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his knees, and his hands
crossed above it. Sleep had not disfigured him--his little white
moustache was still brushed up, his lips closed; a very good and gentle
expression hovered on his face. A curved mark showed on his right
temple, the scar of a cut on the side of his neck, and his left hand was
covered by an old glove, the little forger of which was empty. He woke
up when the march was over and brisked up his moustache.

The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le joli
Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin. Happening to glance at
my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his cheek, and
another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a faint sm