ntryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped,
like bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the
passer-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings which,
according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority of men
take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live and
eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few skillful
musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can recognize the key
in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion that prompts
these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an adorable
and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it is the
gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to
live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with ardent eyes,
would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than the cook who
asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with inflated nostrils
took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to
indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of
misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is
to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the
young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to
live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. Now how
many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical
question which is always with us?

"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more than
twenty!" said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who, freshly
liberated from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.

"Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the
evening!" said a lawyer's clerk.

"But she has a box at the Francais!" said an army officer.

"At any rate," cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he
were standing on the defence, "she does not cost me a sou! In our
case--wouldn't you like to have the same chance, my respected friend?"

And he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.

"Oh! she loves me!" said another. "It seems too good to be true; but she
has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!--Buffon has admirably described the
animals, but the biped called husband--"

What a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!

"Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!" is the answer to a request
discreetly whispered into the ear.

"Can you tell