The young man said nothing. He placed a poor old collar around the
neck of Thomas, and with a line which his mother had once used to
hang clothes upon, he dragged him along to a huge town, where the two
dwelled together in sorrow and want.

The young man had now become an old man, but he was still smoking his
new pipe which too had become old.

One evening Thomas died. People came from the police department, and
carried off his carcass somewhere.

The old man was now all alone with his old pipe. A great cold fell
upon him and a terrible trembling. And he knew that his time had come,
and that he never would be able to smoke again. So from the wretched
bag which he once had brought with him from his home, he took a sad
old hat, and in this he wrapped his pipe.

Then he threw a cape, greenish with age, about his feverish shoulders,
and dragged himself painfully to a little square near by, taking care
that no policeman should see him. He knelt down, and dug in the earth
with his finger nails, and devoutly buried his old pipe underneath a
tuft of flowers. Then he returned to his dwelling-place and died.




MAL DE VIVRE


A poet, Laurent Laurini by name, was sick unto death with the illness,