ore--a condition
of decrepitude unnoticed in the imperfect light of Parisian rooms. He
thought, as he examined the corners of his eyes, and saw the rumpled
lids, the temples, the skinny forehead:

"Damn it, I've not merely got the gloss taken off--I've become quite an
old fogy."

And his desire for rest suddenly increased, with a vague yearning, born
in him for the first time, to take his grandchildren on his knees.

About one o'clock in the afternoon, he arrived in a landau which he had
hired at Marseilles, in front of one of those houses of Southern France
so white, at the end of their avenues of plane-trees that they dazzle us
and make our eyes droop. He smiled as he pursued his way along the walk
before the house, and reflected:

"Deuce take it! this is a nice place."

Suddenly, a young rogue of five or six made his appearance, starting out
of a shrubbery, and remained standing at the side of the path, staring at
the gentleman with eyes wide open.

Mordiane came over to him:

"Good morrow, my boy."

The brat made no reply.

The baron, then, stooping down, took him up in his arms to kiss him, but,
the next moment, suffocated by the smell of garlic with which the child
seemed impregnated all over, he put him back again on the ground,
muttering:

"Oh! it is the gardener's son."

And he proceeded towards the house.

The linen was hanging out to dry on a cord before the door--shirts and
chemises, napkins, dish-cloths, aprons, and sheets, while a row of socks,
hanging from strings one above the other, filled up an entire window,
like sausages exposed for sale in front of a pork-butcher's shop.

The baron announced his arrival. A servant-girl appeared, a true servant
of the South, dirty and untidy, with her hair hanging in wisps and
falling over her face, while her petticoat under the accumulation of
stains which had soiled it had retained only a certain uncouth remnant
of its old color, a hue suitable for a country fair or a mountebank's
tights.

He asked:

"Is M. Duchoux at home?"

He had many years ago, in the mocking spirit of a skeptical man of
pleasure, given this name to the foundling, in order that it might not be
forgotten that he had been picked up under a cabbage.

The servant-girl asked:

"Do you want M. Duchoux?"

"Yes."

"Well, he is in the big room drawing up his plans."

"Tell him that M. Merlin wishes to speak to him."

She replied, in amazement:

"Hey! go inside then, if y