The break in the monotony of daily footfaring proved agreeable. It
suited one well to camp for a space in that quaint town, isolate in the
heart of an enchanted land, with which one was in turn enchanted, and
contemplate soberly the grave issues of Life and Death.

Here (said Duchemin) nothing can disturb me; and it is high time for me
to be considering what I am to make of the remainder of my days. Too
many of them have been wasted, too great a portion of my span has been
sacrificed to vanities. One must not forget one is in a fair way to
become a grandfather; it is plainly an urgent duty to reconcile oneself
to that estate and cultivate its proper gravity and decorum. Yet a
little while and one must bid adieu to that Youth which one has so
heedlessly squandered, a last adieu to Youth with its days of high
adventure, its carefree heart, its susceptibility to the infinite
seductions of Romance.

Quite seriously the adventurer entertained a premonition of his
to-morrow, a vision of himself in skull-cap and seedy clothing (the
trousers well-bagged at the knees) with rather more than a mere hint of
an equator emphasized by grease-spots on his waistcoat, presiding over
the fortunes of one of those dingy little Parisian shops wherein
debatable antiques accumulate dust till they fetch the ducats of the
credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his
ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his
placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a thrifty and
respectable bourgeois, the final avatar of a rolling stone!

Yes: it is amusing, but quite true; though it would need a deal of
contriving, something little short of a revolution to bring it about,