“I am thirty years of age, but I look to be forty-five at least.”

I regarded him straight in the face.  His shrunken figure, so badly cared for, gave one the impression that he was an old man.  On the summit of his cranium, a few long hairs shot straight up from the skin of doubtful cleanness.  He had enormous eyelashes, a large moustache, and a thick beard.  Suddenly, I had a kind of vision.  I know not why; the vision of a basin filled with noisome water, the water which should have been applied to that poll.  I said to him: 

“Verily, you look to be more than that age.  Of a certainty you must have experienced some great disappointment.”

He replied: 

“I tell you that I have not.  I am old because I never take air.  There is nothing that vitiates the life of a man more than the atmosphere of a cafe.”

I could not believe him.

“You must surely have been married as well?  One could not get as bald-headed as you are without having been much in love.”

He shook his head, sending down his back little white things which fell from the end of his locks: 

“No, I have always been virtuous.”

And raising his eyes towards the luster, which beat down on our heads, he said: 

“If I am bald-headed, it is the fault of the gas.  It is the enemy of hair.  Waiter, a ‘bock.’  You must be thirsty also?”

“No, thank you.  But you certainly interest me.  Since when did you have your first discouragement?  Your life is not normal, it is not natural.  There is something under it all.”

“Yes, and it dates from my infancy.  I received a heavy blow when I was very young, and that turned my life into darkness, which will last to the end.”

“How did it come about?”

“You wish to know about it?  Well, then, listen.  You recall, of course, the castle in which I was brought up, seeing that you used to visit it for five or six months during the vacations?  You remember that large, gray building, in the middle of a great park, and the long avenues of oaks, which opened towards the four cardinal points!  You remember my father and mother, both of whom were ceremonious, solemn and severe.

“I worshiped my mother; I was suspicious of my father; but I respected both, accustomed always as I was to see everyone bow before them.  They were in the country, Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse; while our neighbors, the Tannemares’, the Ravelets’, the Brennevilles’, showed the utmost consideration for my parents.

“I was then thirteen years old.  I was happy, satisfied with everything, as one is at that age, full of joy and vivacity.

“Now towards the end of September, a few days before my entering college, while I was enjoying myself in the mazes of the park, climbing the trees and swinging on the branches, I descried in crossing an avenue, my father and mother, who were walking along.