d and keep
his gold; therefore he continued to study his Baedeker, and did not ask
the poor coster for his opinion.

The old man, with faith unshaken, left the church, the abbe's
comforting words ringing in his ears: "Take no heed of to-morrow," and
crossed to the left shore of the river.

At the corner of the Boulevard St. Michel he was fortunate enough to
sell six centimes' worth of his stuff at a reduced price. And on he
trudged and turned into the Rue Bonaparte.

It was afternoon, that saddest time of the day when the sun is setting,
but darkness has not yet fallen, darkness which brings in its train
peace for the weary souls who long to rest and play for a while before
they are compelled to face torturing dreams and memories.

He sat down on a stone step and counted his money: eighty centimes;
that was twenty centimes less than the franc which he had spent at the
gate. How could he pay six francs to the nursery gardener? How could he
buy food and drink, how return before nightfall to Suresnes? He saw in
imagination the endless Champs Elysees, the long Avenue de la Grande
Armee, the terrible Avenue Neuilly. No, it was too far to go back, too
far.

He looked about searchingly, and his dim eyes were dazzled by the gleam
of the blue and red glass bottles in the chemist's shop on the other
side of the street, which sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. They
stood on long shelves, filled with bottles and boxes; patent medicines
for indigestion; appetite restoratives; powders to calm feverish brains
which had brooded too long over the riddle of life; means of protection
from over-population or increasing poverty; headache pencils for those
who tried to solve social problems; rouge for night-birds, tabloids for
nervous ailments and financially independent people. All these things
could be bought there.

The old man rose hastily, as if a buyer had beckoned to him, and
entered the chemist's shop.

"Six centimes' worth of laudanum, please," he said. "My wife is
suffering from convulsions."

And as if to prove his wo