II

SILHOUETTE OF THE INHABITANT

One day, about three in the afternoon, that door was opened. Out of it
came a little old man, fat, provided with an abdomen heavy and
projecting which obliges him to make many sacrifices. He has to wear
trousers excessively wide, not to be troubled in walking. He has
renounced, long ago, the use of boots and trouser straps. He wears
shoes. His shoes were hardly polished.

The waistcoat, incessantly impelled to the upper part of the gastric
cavities by that great abdomen, and depressed by the weight of two
thoracic bumps that would make the happiness of a thin woman, offers
to the pleasantries of the passers-by a perfect resemblance to a
napkin rolled on the knees of a guest absorbed in discussion at
dessert.

The legs are thin, the arm is long, one of the hands is gloved only on
most solemn occasions and the other hand ignores absolutely the
advantage of a second skin.

That personage avoids the alms and the pity that his venerable green
frock coat invites, by wearing the red ribbon at his button-hole. This
proves the utility of the Order of the Legion of Honor which has been
contested too much in the past ten years, the new Knights of the Order
say.

The battered hat, in a constant state of horror in the places where a
reddish fuzz endures, would not be picked up by a rag picker, if the