ter hour, the sorry
funerals of the faubourg Saint-Marceau wend their way. This esplanade,
which commands a view of Paris, has been taken possession of by
bowl-players; it is, in fact, a sort of bowling green frequented by old
gray faces, belonging to kindly, worthy men, who seem to continue the
race of our ancestors, whose countenances must only be compared with
those of their surroundings.

The man who had become, during the last few days, an inhabitant of this
desert region, proved an assiduous attendant at these games of bowls;
and must, undoubtedly, be considered the most striking creature of these
various groups, who (if it is permissible to liken Parisians to
the different orders of zoology) belonged to the genus mollusk. The
new-comer kept sympathetic step with the _cochonnet_,--the little
bowl which serves as a goal and on which the interest of the game must
centre. He leaned against a tree when the _cochonnet_ stopped; then,
with the same attention that a dog gives to his master's gestures, he
looked at the other bowls flying through the air, or rolling along the
ground. You might have taken him for the weird and watchful genii of the
_cochonnet_. He said nothing; and the bowl-players--the most fanatic
men that can be encountered among the sectarians of any faith--had never
asked the reason of his dogged silence; in fact, the most observing of
them thought him deaf and dumb.

When it happened that the distances between the bowls and the
_cochonnet_ had to be measured, the cane of this silent being was used
as a measure, the players coming up and taking it from the icy hands
of the old man and returning it without a word or even a sign of
friendliness. The loan of his cane seemed a servitude to which he
had negatively consented. When a shower fell, he stayed near the
_cochonnet_, the slave of the bowls, and the guardian of the unfinished
game. Rain affected him no more than the fine weather did; he was, like
the players themselves, an intermediary species between a Parisian
who has the lowest intellect of his kind and an animal which has the
highest.

In other respects, pallid and shrunken, indifferent to his own person,
vacant in mind, he often came bareheaded, showing his sparse white
hair, and his square, yellow, bald skull, like the knee of a beggar seen
through his tattered trousers. His mouth was half-open, no ideas were
in his glance, no precise object appeared in his movements; he never
smiled; he n