wife's attention to two strangers who appeared in a by-path making for
the _rond-point_.

"What can it mean?" cried the old mother. "They are Parisians."

"Here they come!" said Michu. "Hide my gun," he whispered to his wife.

The two men who now crossed the wide open space of the _rond-point_
were typical enough for a painter. One, who appeared to be the
subaltern, wore top-boots, turned down rather low, showing well-made
calves, and colored silk stockings of doubtful cleanliness. The
breeches, of ribbed cloth, apricot color with metal buttons, were too
large; they were baggy about the body, and the lines of their creases
seemed to indicate a sedentary man. A marseilles waistcoat, overloaded
with embroidery, open, and held together by one button only just above
the stomach, gave to the wearer a dissipated look,--all the more so,
because his jet black hair, in corkscrew curls, hid his forehead and
hung down his cheeks. Two steel watch-chains were festooned upon his
breeches. The shirt was adorned with a cameo in white and blue. The
coat, cinnamon-colored, was a treasure to caricaturists by reason of
its long tails, which, when seen from behind, bore so perfect a
resemblance to a cod that the name of that fish was given to them. The
fashion of codfish tails lasted ten years; almost the whole period of
the empire of Napoleon. The cravat, loosely fastened, and with
numerous small folds, allowed the wearer to bury his face in it up to
the nostrils. His pimpled skin, his long, thick, brick-dust colored
nose, his high cheek-bones, his mouth, lacking half its teeth but
greedy for all that and menacing, his ears adorned with huge gold
rings, his low forehead,--all these personal details, which might have
seemed grotesque in many men, were rendered terrible in him by two