Toward evening, as the dusk invaded the streets, and the lanterns, from their brackets on the walls, set up their empire over the fleeting day, an indefinable melancholy descended over him: the melancholy of the city that affects the young and the stranger. Barabant's spirits, quick to soar, momentarily succumbed to that feeling of loneliness and aloofness that attacks the individual in the solitudes of nature and in that wilderness of men, the city.
He was leaning against a pillar in the Rue St. Honoré, in this ruminative mood watching the unfamiliar crowd, when his glance was stopped by the figure of a flower-girl. She was tall, dark, and lithe, and, though without any particular charm of form, she had such an unusual grace in her movements that he fell curiously to speculating on her face. But the turning proving a disappointment, he laughed at his haste, and his glance wandered elsewhere.
"Citoyen, buy my cockade?"
Barabant turned quickly; the flower-girl was at his side, smiling mischievously up at him. He was conscious of a sudden embarrassment—a solicitude for his bearing before the frank amusement of the girl. This time he did not turn away so carelessly. The face was attractive despite its irregularity, full of force in the free span of the forehead and of sudden passions in the high, starting eyebrows. The eyes alone seemed cold and sardonic, without emotion or change.
"Come, citoyen, a cockade."
Barabant shrugged his shoulders, and diving into his purse, at length produced a few coppers.
"A patriot's dinner is more my need, citoyenne, than a cockade."
The girl, who had been watching with amusement this search after the elusive coins, ignoring his answer, asked curiously:
"From the provinces?"
Barabant, resenting the patronizing tone, said stiffly: