e preserved the memory of a
worthy man named M. Gillenormand, and who mention him with complaisance.
This good man was old when they were young. This silhouette has not yet
entirely disappeared--for those who regard with melancholy that vague
swarm of shadows which is called the past--from the labyrinth of streets
in the vicinity of the Temple to which, under Louis XIV., the names of
all the provinces of France were appended exactly as in our day, the
streets of the new Tivoli quarter have received the names of all the
capitals of Europe; a progression, by the way, in which progress is
visible.

M.Gillenormand, who was as much alive as possible in 1831, was one of
those men who had become curiosities to be viewed, simply because
they have lived a long time, and who are strange because they formerly
resembled everybody, and now resemble nobody. He was a peculiar old man,
and in very truth, a man of another age, the real, complete and rather
haughty bourgeois of the eighteenth century, who wore his good, old
bourgeoisie with the air with which marquises wear their marquisates. He
was over ninety years of age, his walk was erect, he talked loudly, saw
clearly, drank neat, ate, slept, and snored. He had all thirty-two of
his teeth. He only wore spectacles when he read. He was of an amorous
disposition, but declared that, for the last ten years, he had wholly
and decidedly renounced women. He could no longer please, he said; he
did not add: "I am too old," but: "I am too poor." He said: "If I were
not ruined--Heee!" All he had left, in fact, was an income of about
fifteen thousand francs. His dream was to come into an inheritance and
to have a hundred thousand livres income for mistresses. He did
not belong, as the reader will perceive, to that puny variety of
octogenaries who, like M. de Voltaire, have been dying all their life;
his was no longevity of a cracked pot; this jovial old man had always
had good health. He was superficial, rapid, easily angered. He flew into
a passion at everything, generally quite contrary to all reason. When
contradicted, he raised his cane; he beat people as he had done in the
great century. He had a daughter over fifty years of age, and unmarried,
whom he chastised severely with his tongue, when in a rage, and whom he
would have liked to whip. She seemed to him to be eight years old. He
boxed his servants' ears soundly, and said: "Ah! carogne!" One of his
oaths was: "By the pantoufloche of th