Within the dressing-gown there was a man.  This man had reached the interesting age.  I mean the age when you think you have shed all the illusions of infancy, when you think you understand life, and when you are often occupied in speculating upon the delicious surprises which existence may hold for you; the age, in sum, that is the most romantic and tender of all ages—­for a male.  I mean the age of fifty.  An age absurdly misunderstood by all those who have not reached it!  A thrilling age!  Appearances are tragically deceptive.

The inhabitant of the puce dressing-gown had a short greying beard and moustache; his plenteous hair was passing from pepper into salt; there were many minute wrinkles in the hollows between his eyes and the fresh crimson of his cheeks; and the eyes were sad; they were very sad.  Had he stood erect and looked perpendicularly down, he would have perceived, not his slippers, but a protuberant button of the dressing-gown.  Understand me:  I conceal nothing; I admit the figures written in the measurement-book of his tailor.  He was fifty.  Yet, like most men of fifty, he was still very young, and, like most bachelors of fifty, he was rather helpless.  He was quite sure that he had not had the best of luck.  If he had excavated his soul he would have discovered somewhere in its deeps a wistful, appealing desire to be taken care of, to be sheltered from the inconveniences and harshness of the world.  But he would not have admitted the discovery.  A bachelor of fifty cannot be expected to admit that he resembles a girl of nineteen.  Nevertheless it is a strange fact that the resemblance between the heart of an experienced, adventurous bachelor of fifty and the simple heart of a girl of nineteen is stronger than girls of nineteen imagine; especially when the bachelor of fifty is sitting solitary and unfriended at two o’clock in the night, in the forlorn atmosphere of a house that has outlived its hopes.  Bachelors of fifty alone will comprehend me.

It has never been decided what young girls do meditate upon when they meditate; young girls themselves cannot decide.  As a rule the lonely fancies of middle-aged bachelors are scarcely less amenable to definition.  But the case of the inhabitant of the puce dressing-gown was an exception to the rule.  He knew, and he could have said, precisely what he was thinking about.  In that sad hour and place, his melancholy thoughts were centred upon the resplendent, unique success in life of a gifted and glorious being known to nations and newspapers as Priam Farll.

Riches and Renown