left in a wild mood, without so much as saying goodbye.... I don't know
how Monsieur Duruy's ushers were affected by his visit that morning;
but I do know that after that awful blind man had left, I have never
felt so sad, so bad, in the whole of my life.

The very sight of ink sickened me, my pen horrified me, I wanted to
distance myself from it all, to run away, to see trees, to feel
something good, real.... Good God! The hatred, the venom, the
unquenchable need to belittle it all, to befoul everything! Oh! That
wretched man....

Then I furiously paced up and down in my room still hearing the
giggling disgust he had shown for his daughter. Right then, I felt
something under my feet, near where the blind man had been sitting.
Bending down, I recognised his wallet, a thick, worn wallet, with split
corners, which he always carried with him and laughingly called his
pocket of venom.

This wallet, in our world, was as famous as Monsieur de Girardin's
cartoons. Rumour has it that there are some awful things in it.... I
was soon to discover the truth of it. The old over-stuffed wallet had
burst open as it fell and the papers inside fell onto the carpet; I had
to collect them one by one....

There was a package of letters written on decorated paper, all
beginning, _My dear Daddy,_ and signed, _Celine Bixiou at the Children
of Mary hospital_.

There were old prescriptions for childhood ailments: croup,
convulsions, scarlet fever and measles.... (the poor little girl hadn't
missed out on a single one of them!)

Finally, there was a hidden envelope from which came a two or three
curly, blond hairs, which might have come from the girl's bonnet. There
was some writing on it in a large, unsteady hand; the handwriting of a
blind man:

_Celine's hair, cut the 13th May, the day she went to that hell_.

That's all there was in Bixiou's wallet.

Let's face it, Parisians, you're all the same; disgust, irony, evil
laughter at vicious jokes. And what does it all amount to?...

_Celine's hair, cut on the 13th May_.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN BRAIN

_To the Lady who wants pleasant stories._

I took your letter, madame, as an invitation to change my ways. I have
been tempted to shade my little tales a touch too darkly, and I
promised myself to give you something joyful, wildly joyful, today.

After all, what have I got to be sad about? Here I am living hundreds
of kilometres from the fogs of Paris, on a radiantly beaut