, man or woman,
at whose aspect a thousand confused thoughts spring into his mind?
At that sight we are suddenly interested, either by features of some
fantastic conformation which reveal an agitated life, or by a singular
effect of the whole person, produced by gestures, air, gait, clothes; or
by some deep, intense look; or by other inexpressible signs which seize
our minds suddenly and forcibly without our being able to explain even
to ourselves the cause of our emotion. The next day other thoughts and
other images have carried out of sight that passing dream. But if we
meet the same personage again, either passing at some fixed hour, like
the clerk of a mayor's office, or wandering about the public promenades,
like those individuals who seem to be a sort of furniture of the streets
of Paris, and who are always to be found in public places, at first
representations or noted restaurants,--then this being fastens himself
or herself on our memory, and remains there like the first volume of a
novel the end of which is lost. We are tempted to question this unknown
person, and say, "Who are you?" "Why are you lounging here?" "By what
right do you wear that pleated ruffle, that faded waistcoat, and carry
that cane with an ivory top; why those blue spectacles; for what reason
do you cling to that cravat of a dead and gone fashion?" Among these
wandering creations some belong to the species of the Greek Hermae;
they say nothing to the soul; _they are there_, and that is all. Why? is
known to none. Such figure are a type of those used by sculptors for
the four Seasons, for Commerce, for Plenty, etc. Some others--former
lawyers, old merchants, elderly generals--move and walk, and yet seem
stationary. Like old trees that are half uprooted by the current of a
river, they seem never to take part in the torrent of Paris, with its
youthful, active crowd. It is impossible to know if their friends
have forgotten to bury them, or whether they have escaped out of their
coffins. At any rate, they have reached the condition of semi-fossils.

One of these Parisian Melmoths had come within a few days into a
neighborhood of sober, quiet people, who, when the weather is fine,
are invariably to be found in the space which lies between the
south entrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the
Observatoire,--a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris.
There, Paris is no longer; and there, Paris still lingers. The spot is
a mingli