“What is there new?”

I really had nothing new to tell him.  I stammered: 

“Nothing, old man.  I am a business man.”

In his monotonous tone of voice he said: 

“Indeed, does it amuse you?”

“No, but what can I do?  One must do something!”

“Why should one?”

“So as to have occupation.”

“What’s the use of an occupation?  For my part, I do nothing at all, as you see, never anything.  When one has not a sou I can understand why one should work.  But when one has enough to live on, what’s the use?  What is the good of working?  Do you work for yourself, or for others?  If you work for yourself, you do it for your own amusement, which is all right; if you work for others, you are a fool.”

Then, laying his pipe on the marble table, he called out anew: 

“Waiter, a ‘bock.’” And continued:  “It makes me thirsty to keep calling so.  I am not accustomed to that sort of thing.  Yes, yes, I do nothing.  I let things slide, and I am growing old.  In dying I shall have nothing to regret.  My only remembrance will be this beer hall.  No wife, no children, no cares, no sorrows, nothing.  That is best.”

He then emptied the glass which had been brought him, passed his tongue over his lips, and resumed his pipe.

I looked at him in astonishment, and said: 

“But you have not always been like that?”

“Pardon me; ever since I left college.”

“That is not a proper life to lead, my dear fellow; it is simply horrible.  Come, you must have something to do, you must love something, you must have friends.”

“No, I get up at noon, I come here, I have my breakfast, I drink my beer, I remain until the evening, I have my dinner, I drink beer.  Then about half-past one in the morning, I go home to bed, because the place closes up; that annoys me more than anything.  In the last ten years I have passed fully six years on this bench, in my corner; and the other four in my bed, nowhere else.  I sometimes chat with the regular customers.”

“But when you came to Paris what did you do at first?”

“I paid my devoirs to the Cafe de Medicis.”

“What next?”

“Next I crossed the water and came here.”

“Why did you take that trouble?”

“What do you mean?  One cannot remain all one’s life in the Latin Quarter.  The students make too much noise.  Now I shall not move again.  Waiter, a ‘bock.’”

I began to think that he was making fun of me, and I continued: 

“Come now, be frank.  You have been the victim of some great sorrow; some disappointment in love, no doubt!  It is easy to see that you are a man who has had some trouble.  What age are you?”

“I am thirty, but I look forty-five, at least.”

I looked him straight in the face.  His wrinkled, ill-shaven face gave one the impression that he was an old man.  On the top of his head a few long hairs waved over a skin of doubtful cleanliness.  He had enormous eyelashes, a heavy mustache, and a thick beard.  Suddenly I had a kind of vision, I know not why, of a basin filled with dirty water in which all that hair had been washed.  I said to him: