“I am thirty, but I look forty-five, at least.”
I looked him straight in the face. His wrinkled, ill-shaven face gave one the impression that he was an old man. On the top of his head a few long hairs waved over a skin of doubtful cleanliness. He had enormous eyelashes, a heavy mustache, and a thick beard. Suddenly I had a kind of vision, I know not why, of a basin filled with dirty water in which all that hair had been washed. I said to him:
“You certainly look older than your age. You surely must have experienced some great sorrow.”
He replied:
“I tell you that I have not. I am old because I never go out into the air. Nothing makes a man deteriorate more than the life of a cafe.”
I still could not believe him.
“You must surely also have been married? One could not get as bald-headed as you are without having been in love.”
He shook his head, shaking dandruff down on his coat as he did so.
“No, I have always been virtuous.”
And, raising his eyes toward the chandelier which heated our heads, he said: