to live is deserted
by eight o'clock at night, and the roads are full of dangers, the least
of which is robbery? Have you noticed those wide spaces not yet built
upon, these fields, these gardens? You may tell me that I live here;
but, monsieur, I never go out after six o'clock. You may also remind me
of the two young men on the second floor, above the apartment you are
going to take. But, monsieur, those two poor men of letters are pursued
by creditors. They are in hiding; they are away in the daytime and
only return at night; they have no reason to fear robbers or assassins;
besides, they always go together and are armed. I myself obtained
permission from the prefecture of police that they should carry arms."

"Monsieur," said Godefroid, "I am not afraid of robbers, for the same
reasons that make those gentlemen invulnerable; and I despise life
so heartily that if I were murdered by mistake I should bless the
murderer!"

"You do not look to me very unhappy," said the old man, examining
Godefroid.

"I have, at the most, enough to get me bread to live on; and I have come
to this place, monsieur, because of its silent neighborhood. May I ask
you what interest you have in driving me away?"

The old man hesitated; he saw Madame Vauthier close behind them.
Godefroid, who examined him attentively, was astonished at the degree of
thinness to which grief, perhaps hunger, perhaps toil, had reduced him.
There were signs of all those causes upon that face, where the parched
skin clung to the bones as if it had been burned by the sun of Africa.
The dome of the forehead, high and threatening, overshadowed a pair
of steel-blue eyes,--two cold, hard, sagacious, penetrating eyes, like
those of savages, surrounded by a black and wrinkled circle. The large
nose, long and very thin, and the prominent chin, gave the old man a
strong resemblance to the well-known mask popularly ascribed to Don
Quixote; but a wicked Don Quixote, without illusions,--a terrible Don
Quixote.

And yet the old man, in spite of this general aspect of severity,
betrayed the weakness and timidity which indigence imparts to all
unfortunates. These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in
that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily
enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote
was complicated with Montesquieu's president.

His clothing was entirely of black cloth, but cloth that was white at
the seams. T