his vulnerable point: the monstrous depth of his vanity in that
pretense of youth which he preserved through superhuman pains
and a genius of a valet, most excellently! I had much to pay
Antonio for myself, more for my father, most for my mother. This
was why that last of all the world I would have wished that old
fortune-hunter to know how far I had been reduced!

Then I rejoiced about that change which my unreal baldness
produced in me, giving me a look of forty years instead of
twenty-four, so that my oldest friend must take at least three
stares to know me. Also, my costume would disguise me from the
few acquaintances I had in Paris (if they chanced to cross the
Seine), as they had only seen me in the shabbiest; while, at my
last meeting with Antonio, I had been as fine in the coat as
now.

Yet my encouragement was not so joyful that my gaze lifted
often. On the very last day, in the afternoon when my
observances were most and noisiest, I lifted my eyes but once
during the final half-hour--but such a one that was!

The edge of that beautiful grey pongee skirt came upon the lid
of my lowered eyelid like a cool shadow over hot sand. A sergent
had just made many of the people move away, so there remained
only a thin ring of the laughing pantaloons about me, when this
divine skirt presented its apparition to me. A pair of North-
American trousers accompanied it, turned up to show the ankle-
bones of a rich pair of stockings; neat, enthusiastic and
humorous, I judged them to be; for, as one may discover, my only
amusement during my martyrdom--if this misery can be said to