brother, both born at Troyes, were
sent in youth to serve their apprenticeship in a government office.
Their mother made herself notorious by misconduct, and the two brothers
had the grief of hearing of her death in the hospital at Troyes,
although they had frequently sent money for her support. This event led
them both not only to abjure marriage, but to feel a horror of children;
ill at ease with them, they feared them as others fear madmen, and
watched them with haggard eyes.

Since the day when he first came to Paris Poiret junior had never gone
outside the city. He began at that time to keep a journal of his life,
in which he noted down all the striking events of his day. Du Bruel
told him that Lord Byron did the same thing. This likeness filled
Poiret junior with delight, and led him to buy the works of Lord Byron,
translated by Chastopalli, of which he did not understand a word. At the
office he was often seen in a melancholy attitude, as though absorbed in
thought, when in fact he was thinking of nothing at all. He did not know
a single person in the house where he lived, and always carried the keys
of his apartment about with him. On New-Year's day he went round and
left his own cards on all the clerks of the division. Bixiou took it
into his head on one of the hottest of dog-days to put a layer of lard
under the lining of a certain old hat which Poiret junior (he was, by
the bye, fifty-two years old) had worn for the last nine years. Bixiou,
who had never seen any other hat on Poiret's head, dreamed of it
and declared he tasted it in his food; he therefore resolved, in the
interests of his digestion, to relieve the bureau of the sight of that
amorphous old hat. Poiret junior left the office regularly at four
o'clock. As he walked along, the sun's rays reflected from the
pavements and walls produced a tropical heat; he felt that his head was
inundated,--he, who never perspired! Feeling that he was ill, or on the
point of being so, instead of going as usual to the Sucking Calf he went
home, drew out from his desk the journal of his life, and recorded the
fact in the following manner:--

"To-day, July 3, 1823, overtaken by extraordinary perspiration, a
sign, perhaps, of the sweating-sickness, a malady which prevails
in Champagne. I am about to consult Doctor Haudry. The disease
first appeared as I reached the highest part of the quai des
Ecoles."

Suddenly, having taken off his hat, he became aware