the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.

"What, is this you?"

"Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn't it?"

Then they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the
nature of the joke which opens the conversation.

When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police
officer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of
the newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and of
the taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty
certain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and
if they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reached
Frascati's before they have asked each other a roundabout question
whose free translation may be this:

"Whom are you living with now?"

As a general rule she is a charming woman.

Who is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped,
like bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the
passer-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings
which, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority
of men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live
and eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few
skillful musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can
recognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion
that prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an
adorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it
is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to
saunter is to live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with
ardent eyes, would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than
the cook who asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with
inflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to
enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the
sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque
physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand
existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for
the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their
passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard
to the categorical question which is always with us?

"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more
than twenty!" said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes,