is bones, but nothing through his eyes. He declared that he was a chemist.
He had been a jack of all trades. He had played in vaudeville at Saint-Mihiel. He was a man of purpose, a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures. His occupation consisted in selling, in the open air, plaster busts and portraits of "the head of the State."
In addition to this, he extracted teeth.
He had exhibited phenomena at fairs, and he had owned a booth with a trumpet and this poster: "Babet, Dental Artist, Member of the Academies, makes physical experiments on metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes stumps abandoned by his brother practitioners.
Price:
one tooth, one franc, fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth, two francs, fifty.
Take advantage of this opportunity." This Take advantage of this opportunity meant:
Have as many teeth extracted as possible.
He had been married and had had children. He did not know what had become of his wife and children.
He had lost them as one loses his handkerchief.
Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the world to which he belonged.
One day, at the period when he had his family with him in his booth on wheels, he had read in the Messager, that a woman had just given birth to a child, who was doing well, and had a calf''s muzzle, and he exclaimed: "There''s a fortune! my wife has not the wit to present me with a child like that!"