little old man let it fall and left it at a street corner.

Too absent-minded to submit to the bother that the wearing of a wig
entails, that man of science--he is a man of science--shows, when he
makes a bow, a head that, viewed from the top, has the appearance of
the Farnese Hercules's knee.

Above each ear, tufts of twisted white hair shine in the sun like the
angry silken hairs of a boar at bay. The neck is athletic and
recommends itself to the notice of caricaturists by an infinity of
wrinkles, of furrows; by a dewlap faded but armed with darts in the
fashion of thistles.

The constant state of the beard explains at once why the necktie,
always crumpled and rolled by the gestures of a disquiet head, has its
own beard, infinitely softer than that of the good old man, and formed
of threads scratched from its unfortunate tissue.

Now, if you have divined the torso and the powerful back, you will
know the sweet tempered face, somewhat pale, the blue ecstatic eyes
and the inquisitive nose of that good old man, when you learn that,
in the morning, wearing a silk head kerchief and tightened in a
dressing-gown, the illustrious professor--he is a professor--resembled
an old woman so much that a young man who came from the depths of
Saxony, of Weimar, or of Prussia, expressly to see him, said to him,
"Forgive me, Madame!" and withdrew.

This silhouette of one of the most learned and most venerated
members of the Institute betrays so well enthusiasm for study and
absent-mindedness caused by application to the quest of truth, that you