and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of
Paris; a people eminently good and eminently evil--like all the masses
who suffer--accustomed to endure unspeakable woes, and whom a fatal
power holds ever down to the level of the mire. They all have a dream,
a hope, a happiness,--cards, lottery, or wine.

There was nothing of all this in the personage who now leaned
carelessly against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, like
some fantastic idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas the
front of which is turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whose
leaden visage expressed some deep but chilling thought, dried up all
pity in the hearts of those who looked at him by the scowling look and
the sarcastic attitude which announced an intention of treating every
man as an equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkled
skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague resemblance to a block of
granite. A few gray locks on either side of his head fell straight to
the collar of his greasy coat, which was buttoned to the chin. He
resembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote; he was, apparently, scoffing
but melancholy, full of disdain and philosophy, but half-crazy. He
seemed to have no shirt. His beard was long. A rusty black cravat,
much worn and ragged, exposed a protuberant neck deeply furrowed, with
veins as thick as cords. A large brown circle like a bruise was
strongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at least sixty years
old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were trodden down at
the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers, mended in
various places, were covered with a species of fluff which made them
offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes exhaled a
fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the "poor smell"
which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies, and
hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which no