perhaps the badge of some powerful association?  But to wear it so persistently he must surely have some powerful and hidden protection.  It would be well to be on one’s guard, especially as he received all pleasantries with unruffled calmness.  After that he was treated with respect, and his sham courage saved him; he was appointed head clerk on the first of January, 1880.  His whole life had been spent indoors.  He hated noise and bustle, and because of this love of rest and quiet he had remained a bachelor.  He spent his Sundays reading tales of adventure and ruling guide lines which he afterward offered to his colleagues.  In his whole existence he had only taken three vacations of a week each, when he was changing his quarters.  But sometimes, on a holiday, he would leave by an excursion train for Dieppe or Havre in order to elevate his mind by the inspiring sight of the sea.

He was full of that common sense which borders on stupidity.  For a long time he had been living quietly, with economy, temperate through prudence, chaste by temperament, when suddenly he was assailed by a terrible apprehension.  One evening in the street he suddenly felt an attack of dizziness which made him fear a stroke of apoplexy.  He hastened to a physician and for five francs obtained the following prescription: 

   M. X-, fifty-five years old, bachelor, clerk.  Full-blooded,
   danger of apoplexy.  Cold-water applications, moderate nourishment,
   plenty of exercise.  MONTELLIER, M.D.

Patissot was greatly distressed, and for a whole month, in his office, he kept a wet towel wrapped around his head like a turban while the water continually dripped on his work, which he would have to do over again.  Every once in a while he would read the prescription over, probably in the hope of finding some hidden meaning, of penetrating into the secret thought of the physician, and also of discovering some forms of exercise which, might perhaps make him immune from apoplexy.

Then he consulted his friends, showing them the fateful paper.  One advised boxing.  He immediately hunted up an instructor, and, on the first day, he received a punch in the nose which immediately took away all his ambition in this direction.  Single-stick made him gasp for breath, and he grew so stiff from fencing that for two days and two nights he could not get sleep.  Then a bright idea struck him.  It was to walk, every Sunday, to some suburb of Paris and even to certain places in the capital which he did not know.

For a whole week his mind was occupied with thoughts of the equipment which you need for these excursions; and on Sunday, the 30th of May, he began his preparations.  After reading all the extraordinary advertisements which poor, blind and halt beggars distribute on the street corners, he began to visit the stores with the intention of looking about him only and of buying later on.  First of all, he visited a so-called American shoe store, where heavy travelling shoes were