A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant | Page 3

side pocket of his waistcoat.
"I have them," he replied.
"Show them to me," she said. "Often you have only the case."
The professor took the case out of his pocket and showed the spectacles
with a triumphant air.
"You would do well to keep them on your nose," she said.
M. de Saint-Leu put on his spectacles, after rubbing the glasses with his
handkerchief.
Naturally, he thrust the handkerchief under his left arm while he set his
spectacles on his nose. Then he walked a few steps towards the Rue de
Fleurus and relaxed his hold on the handkerchief, which fell.
"I was sure of it," said Madame Adolphe to herself. She picked up the
handkerchief and cried:
"Monsieur! Monsieur!"
"Well!" exclaimed the professor, made indignant by her watchfulness.
"I beg your pardon," he said, receiving the handkerchief.
"Have you any money?" asked Madame Adolphe with maternal
solicitude.
"I need none," he replied naively, explaining thus the lives of all men of
science.

"It depends," Madame Adolphe said. "If you go by way of the Pont des
Arts you need one sou."
"You are right," replied the man of science, as if he were retracing
instructions for a voyage to the North Pole. "I will go through the
Luxembourg, the Rue de Seine, the Pont des Arts, the Louvre, the Rue
du Coq, the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, the Rue des Fosses-
Montmartre. It is the shortest route to the Faubourg Poissonniere."
"It is three o'clock," Madame Adolphe said. "Your sister-in-law dines at
six. You have three hours before you--Yes--you'll be there, but you'll
be late." She searched her apron pocket for two sous, which she handed
to the professor.
"Very well, then," she said to him. "Do not eat too much. You are not a
glutton, but you think of other things. You are frugal, but you eat when
you are absent-minded as if you had no bread at home. Take care not to
make Madame Vernet, your sister-in-law, wait. If you make her wait,
you will never be permitted again to go there alone, and it will be
shameful for you."
Madame Adolphe returned to the threshold of the little door and from
there watched her master. She had to cry to him, "To the right! To the
right!" for he was turning toward the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.
"And yet he is a man of science, people say," she muttered to herself.
"How did he ever manage to get married? I'll ask Madame when I dress
her hair."

IV
INCONVENIENCE OF QUAYS WHERE ARE BOOK STALLS
At four o'clock, Professor Marmus was at the end of the Rue de Seine,
under the arcades of the Institute. Those who know him will admit that
he had done nobly, since he had taken only one hour to go through the
Luxembourg and down the Rue de Seine.
There a lamentable voice, the voice of a child, plucked from the good
man the two sous that Madame Adolphe had given to him. When he
reached the Pont des Arts he remembered that he had to pay toll and
turned back suddenly to beg for a sou from the child.
The little rascal had gone to break the coin, in order to give only one
sou to his mother. She was walking up and down the Rue Mazarine
with her baby at her breast.

It became necessary for the professor to turn his back on the veteran
soldier who guards against the possibility of a Parisian passing over the
bridge without paying the toll.
Two roads were open to him: the Pont Neuf and the Pont Royal.
Curiosity makes one lose more time in Paris than anywhere else.
How may one walk without looking at those little oblong boxes, wide
as the stones of the parapet, that all along the quays stimulate book
lovers with posters saying, "Four Sous--Six Sous--Ten Sous--Twelve
Sous--Thirty Sous?" These catacombs of glory have devoured many
hours that belonged to the poets, to the philosophers and to the men of
science of Paris.
Great is the number of ten-sous pieces spent in the four-sous stalls!
The professor saw a pamphlet by Vicq-d'Azyr, a complete Charles
Bonnet in the edition of Fauche Borel, and an essay on Malus.
"And such then is the sum of our achievements," he said to himself.
"Malus! A genius arrested in his course when he had almost captured
the empire of light! But we have had Fresnel. Fresnel has done
excellent things!--Oh, they will recognize some day that light is only a
mode of substance."
The professor held the notice on Malus. He turned its pages. He had
known Malus. He recalled to himself and recited the names of all the
Maluses. Then he returned to Malus, to his dear Malus, for they had
entered the Institute