brow, his livid lips, and his countenance, where everything breathed depression and weariness of life.
Judging from his firm tread, from the singular vigor which stamped all his movements, he would have hardly been thought fifty.
The wrinkles on his brow were well placed, and would have disposed in his favor any one who observed him attentively.
His lip contracted with a strange fold which seemed severe, and which was humble.
There was in the depth of his glance an indescribable melancholy serenity. In his left hand he carried a little bundle tied up in a handkerchief; in his right he leaned on a sort of a cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and had an air that was not too threatening; the most had been made of its knots, and it had received a coral-like head, made from red wax:
it was a cudgel, and it seemed to be a cane.
There are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in the winter.
The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but this without any affectation.
At that epoch, King Louis XVIII.
went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi: it was one of his favorite excursions.
Towards two o''clock, almost invariably, the royal carriage and cavalcade was seen to pass at full speed along the Boulevard de l''Hopital.
This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women of the quarter who said, "It is two o''clock; there he is returning to the Tuileries."