for the load of newspapers which
he has undertaken to distribute. He receives this political bread with
eagerness, takes it, bears it away. At nine o'clock he is in the bosom
of his family, flings a jest to his wife, snatches a loud kiss from her,
gulps down a cup of coffee, or scolds his children. At a quarter to ten
he puts in an appearance at the _Mairie_. There, stuck upon a stool,
like a parrot on its perch, warmed by Paris town, he registers until
four o'clock, with never a tear or a smile, the deaths and births of an
entire district. The sorrow, the happiness, of the parish flow beneath
his pen--as the essence of the _Constitutionnel_ traveled before upon
his shoulders. Nothing weighs upon him! He goes always straight before
him, takes his patriotism ready made from the newspaper, contradicts no
one, shouts or applauds with the world, and lives like a bird. Two yards
from his parish, in the event of an important ceremony, he can yield
his place to an assistant, and betake himself to chant a requiem from
a stall in the church of which on Sundays he is the fairest ornament,
where his is the most imposing voice, where he distorts his huge mouth
with energy to thunder out a joyous _Amen_. So is he chorister. At four
o'clock, freed from his official servitude, he reappears to shed joy and
gaiety upon the most famous shop in the city. Happy is his wife, he has
no time to be jealous: he is a man of action rather than of sentiment.
His mere arrival spurs the young ladies at the counter; their bright
eyes storm the customers; he expands in the midst of all the finery, the
lace and muslin kerchiefs, that their cunning hands have wrought. Or,
again, more often still, before his dinner he waits on a client, copies
the page of a newspaper, or carries to the doorkeeper some goods that
have been delayed. Every other day, at six, he is faithful to his
post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he betakes himself to the opera,
prepared to become a soldier or an arab, prisoner, savage, peasant,
spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a
eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or
astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to hold his tongue, to
hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always at heart--a huckster still.

At midnight he returns--a man, the good husband, the tender father;
he slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the
illusive forms of the operatic nymphs,