hair scanty and dirty, like a wig thrown on a dust-heap. All are gay
in their degradation, and degraded in their joys; all are marked with
the stamp of debauchery, casting their silence as a reproach; their
very attitude revealing fearful thoughts. Placed between crime and
beggary they have no compunctions, and circle prudently around the
scaffold without mounting it, innocent in the midst of crime, and
vicious in their innocence. They often cause a laugh, but they always
cause reflection. One represents to you civilization stunted,
repressed; he comprehends everything, the honor of the galleys,
patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime, or the fine
astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a perfect
mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and work, but
they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes no
inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls,
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