the middle
of the foot-paths. The approach of death gives him the feelings of a
convalescent accessible to all the delicacy, the hidden poesy of an
exquisite hour of summer in the midst of Parisian life--of an exquisite
hour--his last, and which he will prolong till night. No doubt it is
for that reason that he passes the sumptuous establishment where he
ordinarily takes his bath. He does not stop either at the Chinese Baths.
He is too well known here. All Paris would know of it the same evening.
There would be a scandal of bad taste, much coarse rumour about his
death in the clubs and drawing-rooms. And the old sensualist, the
well-bred man, wishes to spare himself this shame, to plunge and be
swallowed up in the vague anonymity of suicide, like those soldiers who,
after great battles, neither wounded, dead, or living, are simply
put down as "missing." That is why he has nothing on him which can be
recognised, or furnish a hint to the inquiries of the police, why he
seeks in this immense Paris the distant quarter where will open for him
the terrible but oblivious confusion of the pauper's grave. Already,
since Monpavon has been walking, the aspect of the boulevard
has changed. The crowd has become more compact, more active, and
preoccupied, the houses smaller, marked with signs of commerce. When the
gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin are passed, with their overflow
from the faubourgs, the provincial physiognomy of the town accentuates
itself. The old beau no longer knows any one, and can congratulate
himself on being unknown.

The shopkeepers looking curiously after him, with his fine linen, his
well-cut coat, and good figure, take him for some famous actor strolling
on the boulevard--witness of his first triumphs--before the play begins.
The wind freshens, the twilight softens the distances, and while the
long road behind him still glitters, it grows darker now at every
step--like the past, with its retrospections to him who looks back and
regrets. It seems to Monpavon that he is walking into blackness. He
shivers a little, but does not falter, and continues to walk with erect
head and chest thrown out.

M. de Monpavon walks to his death! Now he is entering the complicated
labyrinth of noisy streets, where the clatter of the omnibus mingles
with the thousand humming trades of the working city, where the heat
of the factory chimneys loses itself in the fever of a whole people
struggling against hunger. The air tr