He was rather below than above the middle height; spare and sinewy; square in the shoulders and deep in the chest; with close-clipped hair and beard; grizzled moustache; high cheek-bones; stern impassive features, sharply cut; and deep-set restless eyes, quick and glancing as the eyes of a monkey.  His face, throat, and hands were sunburnt to a deep copper-color, as if cast in bronze.  His age might have been from forty-five to fifty.  He wore a thread-bare frock-coat buttoned to the chin; a stiff black stock revealing no glimpse of shirt-collar; a well-worn hat pulled low over his eyes; and trousers of dark blue cloth, worn very white and shiny at the knees, and strapped tightly down over a pair of much-mended boots.

The more I looked at him, the less I was surprised that Flandrin should have been struck by his appearance.  There was an air of stern poverty and iron resolution about the man that arrested one’s attention at first sight.  The words “ancien militaire" were written in every furrow of his face; in every seam and on every button of his shabby clothing.  That he had seen service, missed promotion, suffered unmerited neglect (or, it might be, merited disgrace), seemed also not unlikely.

Watching him as he sat, half turned away, half hidden by the newspaper he was reading, one elbow resting on the table, one brown, sinewy hand supporting his chin and partly concealing his mouth, I told myself that here, at all events, was a man with a history—­perhaps with a very dark history.  What were the secrets of his past?  What had he done?  What had he endured?  I would give much to know.

My coffee and cigar being brought, I asked for the Figaro, and holding the paper somewhat between the stranger and myself, watched him with increasing interest.

I now began to suspect that he was less interested in his own newspaper than he appeared to be, and that his profound abstraction, like my own, was assumed.  An indefinable something in the turn of his head seemed to tell me that his attention was divided between whatever might be going forward in the room and what he was reading.  I cannot describe what that something was; but it gave me the impression that he was always listening.  When the outer door opened or shut, he stirred uneasily, and once or twice looked sharply round to see what new-comer entered the cafe.  Was he anxiously expecting some one who did not come?  Or was he dreading the appearance of some one whom he wished to avoid?  Might he not be a political refugee?  Might he not be a spy?

“There is nothing of interest in the papers to-day, Monsieur,” said, making another effort to force him into conversation.

He affected not to hear me.

I drew my chair a little nearer, and repeated the observation.

He frowned impatiently, and without looking up, replied:—­

“Eh, mon Dieu, Monsieur!—­when there is a dearth of news!”