his evening coughing-fit,
with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was a clockwork man,
wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse on an excursion across
your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death; and in something the
same way my acquaintance would stop short in the middle of a sentence,
while a cart went by, to save the strain to his voice. Following the
example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of pulse-strokes, and concentrated
all human sensibility in the innermost sanctuary of Self.

"His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. His victims
sometimes flew into a rage and made a great deal of noise, followed by a
great silence; so is it in a kitchen after a fowl's neck has been wrung.

"Toward evening this bill of exchange incarnate would assume ordinary
human shape, and his metals were metamorphosed into a human heart. When
he was satisfied with his day's business, he would rub his hands; his
inward glee would escape like smoke through every rift and wrinkle of
his face;--in no other way is it possible to give an idea of the mute
play of muscle which expressed sensations similar to the soundless
laughter of _Leather Stocking_. Indeed, even in transports of joy,
his conversation was confined to monosyllables; he wore the same
non-committal countenance.

"This was the neighbor Chance found for me in the house in the Rue
de Gres, where I used to live when as yet I was only a second clerk
finishing my third year's studies. The house is damp and dark, and
boasts no courtyard. All the windows look on the street; the whole
dwelling, in claustral fashion, is divided into rooms or cells of equal
size, all opening upon a long corridor dimly lit with borrowed lights.
The place must have been part of an old convent once. So gloomy was it,
that the gaiety of eldest sons forsook them on the stairs before they
reached my neighbor's door. He and his house were much alike; even so
does the oyster resemble his native rock.

"I was the one creature with whom he had any communication, socially
speaking; he would come in to ask for a light, to borrow a book or a
newspaper, and of an evening he would allow me to go into his cell,
and when he was in the humor we would chat together. These marks of
confidence were the results of four years of neighborhood and my own
sober conduct. From sheer lack of pence, I was bound to live pretty much
as he did. Had he any relations or friends? Was he rich or poor?