I was going nowhere in particular; was simply having a short walk after dinner.  I had passed the Credit Lyonnais, the Rue Vivienne, besides several other streets.  Thereupon, I suddenly descried a large public house, which was more than half full.  I walked inside, with no object in view.  I was not the least thirsty.

By a searching sweep of the eye I sought out a place where I would not be too much crowded, and so I went and sat down by the side of a man who seemed to me to be old, and who smoked a halfpenny clay pipe, which had become as black as coal.  From six to eight beer saucers were piled up on the table in front of him, indicating the number of “bocks” he had already absorbed.  With the same sweep of the eye I had recognized a “regular toper,” one of those frequenters of beer-houses, who come in the morning as soon as the place is open, and only go way in the evening when it is about to close.  He was dirty, bald to about the middle of the cranium, while his long, powder and salt, gray hair, fell over the neck of his frock coat.  His clothes, much too large for him, appeared to have been made for him at a time when he carried a great stomach.  One could guess that the pantaloons were not suspended from braces, and that this man could not take ten paces without his having to stop to pull them up and to readjust them.  Did he wear a vest?  The mere thought of his boots and that which they enveloped filled me with horror.  The frayed cuffs were as perfectly black at the edges as were his nails.

As soon as I had sat down near him, this queer creature said to me in a tranquil tone of voice: 

“How goes it with you?”

I turned sharply round to him and closely scanned his features, whereupon he continued: 

“I see you do not recognize me.”

“No, I do not.”

“Des Barrets.”

I was stupefied.  It was Count Jean des Barrets, my old college chum.

I seized him by the hand, and was so dumbfounded that I could find nothing to say.  I, at length, managed to stammer out: 

“And you, how goes it with yourself?”

He responded placidly: 

“With me?  Just as I like.”

He became silent.  I wanted to be friendly, and I selected this phrase: 

“What are you doing now?”

“You see what I am doing,” he answered, quite resignedly.

I felt my face getting red.  I insisted: 

“But every day?”

“Every day is alike to me,” was his response accompanied with a thick puff of tobacco smoke.

He then tapped on the top of the marble table with a sou, to attract the attention of the waiter, and called out: 

“Waiter, two ‘bocks.’”

A voice in the distance repeated: 

“Two bocks, instead of four.”

Another voice, more distant still, shouted out: 

“Here they are, sir, here they are.”

Immediately there appeared a man with a white apron, carrying two “bocks,” which he sat down foaming on the table, the spouts facing over the edge, on to the sandy floor.