like everybody else, like all those idle people who drink beer off
marble topped tables and wear out the seats of their trousers on the
threadbare velvet of the couches.

He grew old amidst the smoke from the pipes, lost his hair under the gas
lights, looked upon his weekly bath, on his fortnightly visit to the
barber's to have his hair cut, and on the purchase of a new coat or hat,
as an event. When he got to his _café_ in a new hat covering he used to
look at himself in the glass for a long time before sitting down, and
took it off and put it on again several times following, and at last
asked his friend, the lady at the bar, who was watching him with
interest, whether she thought it suited him.

Two or three times a year he went to the theater, and in the summer he
sometimes spent his evenings at one of the open air concerts in the
_Champs-Elysées_. He brought back from them some airs which ran in his
head for several weeks, and which he even hummed, beating time with his
foot, while he was drinking his beer, and so the years followed each
other, slow, monotonous and short, because they were quite uneventful.

He did not feel them glide past him. He went on towards death without
fear or agitation, sitting at a table in a _café_, and only the great
glass against which he rested his head, which was every day becoming
balder, reflected the ravages of time which flies and devours men, poor
men.

He only very rarely now thought of the terrible drama which had wrecked
his life, for twenty years had passed since that terrible evening, but
the life he had led since then had worn him out, and the landlord of his
café would often say to him: "You ought to pull yourself together a