The child was not afraid.

CHAPTER VI--WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE

On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked
for rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de
l'Hopital in Paris. This man had the air of a person who is seeking
lodgings, and he seemed to halt, by preference, at the most modest
houses on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.

We shall see further on that this man had, in fact, hired a chamber in
that isolated quarter.

This man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the type of what
may be called the well-bred mendicant,--extreme wretchedness combined
with extreme cleanliness. This is a very rare mixture which inspires
intelligent hearts with that double respect which one feels for the man
who is very poor, and for the man who is very worthy. He wore a very
old and very well brushed round hat; a coarse coat, worn perfectly
threadbare, of an ochre yellow, a color that was not in the least
eccentric at that epoch; a large waistcoat with pockets of a venerable
cut; black breeches, worn gray at the knee, stockings of black worsted;
and thick shoes with copper buckles. He would have been pronounced a
preceptor in some good family, returned from the emigration. He would
have been taken for more than sixty years of age, from his perfectly
white hair, his wrinkled brow, his livid lips, and his countenance,
where everything breathed depression and weariness of life. Judging from
his firm tread, from the singular vigor which stamped all his movements,
he would have hardly been thought fifty. The wrinkles on his brow were
well placed, and would have disposed in his favor any one who observed
him attentively. His lip contracted with a strange fold which seemed
severe, and which was humble. There was in the depth of his glance an
indescribable melancholy serenity. In his left hand he carried a little
bundle tied up in a handkerchief; in his right he leaned on a sort of a
cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and
had an air that was not too threatening; the most had been made of its
knots, and it had received a coral-like head, made from red wax: it was
a cudgel, and it seemed to be a cane.

There are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in the
winter. The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but this
without any affectation.

At that epoch, King Louis XVII