Wherein the Husband of the Concierge fears that he is growing Blind
Darkness was stealing over the city, and Paris was taking a drowsy breath in the twilight before awakening to her evening gaiety and frolic mood.
In her narrow old grey streets, many-shuttered, which huddle about the broad Boule Miche that is the students’ highway on the left bank of the river—in the time-honoured Latin quarter—over against the Ile de la Cité, there stands a narrow way where artists do largely abide. In the whitest house of the block, or the one that at least attempts the nearest to approach a dingy suggestion of whiteness, where at any rate whiteness is become less a bygone tradition than with the rest of its fellows down the length of the alley, there stood at its topmost window, his hands behind his back, and in pensive fashion, a handsome young fellow in the slouched black hat and short black coat, flowing tie, and baggy brown corduroy pantaloons of the student of Paris; but the yellow hair was the hair of Horace Malahide.
His brooding eyes were on the end of the alley, where in the reek of the lilac dusk Paris glittered her myriad lamps, her flaming streets sweeping away into the shadow of the night, showing afar dim sparks of fire that winked up the heights and were lost in the purple firmament, where a white star trembled into liquid light above the gaunt scaffolding of the huge basilica a-top of the distant hill of Montmartre.
A cracked voice in the dark room asked:
“Monsieur wishes that I shall light the candle?”
Before the brooding youth at the window gave answer, a match was struck, and discovered a little old man guarding the flame of a candle with his hand. The old fellow set the candle on a table.
Horace turned, with a sigh, into the room, sat down on a chair, and pushed back his hat; he came down into the world.
“Husband of concierges,” said he——
The little old man, with skull-cap a-top, coughed, held out a protesting hand: