With a white camellia in his buttonhole, above his rosette of the Legion of Honour, he was going up the Boulevard des Capucines with a light step, when the sight of Mme. Jenkins troubled his serenity for a moment.  She had a youthful air, a light in her eyes, something so piquant that he stopped to look at her.  Tall and beautiful, with her long dress of black gauze, her shoulders wrapped in a lace mantle, her hat trimmed with a garland of autumn leaves, she disappeared in the midst of other elegant women in the balmy atmosphere; and the thought that his eyes were going to close forever on this delightful sight, whose pleasures he knew so well, saddened Monpavon a little, and took the spring from his step.  But a few paces farther on, a meeting of another kind gave him back all his courage.

Some one, threadbare, shamefaced, dazzled by the light, was coming down the Boulevard.  It was old Marestang, former senator, former minister, so deeply compromised in the affairs of the “Malta Biscuits,” that, in spite of his age, his services, and the great scandal of such a proceeding, he had been condemned to two years of prison, struck off the roll of the Legion of Honour, of which he had been one of the dignitaries.  The affair was long ago; the poor wretch had just been let out of prison before his sentence had expired, lost, ruined, not having even the means to gild his trouble, for he had had to pay what he owed.  Standing on the curb, he was waiting with bent head till the crowds of carriages should allow him to pass, embarrassed by this stoppage at the fullest spot of the boulevards between the passers-by and the sea of open carriages filled with familiar figures.  Monpavon walking near him, caught his timid, uneasy look, imploring a recognition and hiding from it at the same time.  The idea that one day he could humiliate himself thus, gave him a shudder of revolt.  “Oh! that is not possible!” And straightening himself up and throwing out his chest, he kept on his way, firmer and more resolute than before.

M. de Monpavon walks to his death!  He goes there by the long line of the boulevards, all on fire in the direction of the Madeleine, where he treads the elastic asphalt once more as a lounger, nose in the air, hands crossed behind.  He has time; there is no hurry; he is master of the rendezvous.  At each instant he smiles before him, waves a greeting from the ends of his fingers or makes the more formal bow we have just seen.  Everything revives him, charms him, the noise of the watering-carts, the awnings of the cafes, pulled down to the middle of the foot-paths.  The approach of death gives him the feelings of a convalescent accessible to all the delicacy, the hidden poesy of an exquisite hour of summer in the midst of Parisian life—­of an exquisite hour—­his last, and which he will prolong till night.  No doubt it is for that reason that he passes the sumptuous establishment where he ordinarily takes his bath.  He does not stop