Bobinette drew from her muff a small roll of papers.
The advancing person was a seedy-looking individual, stooping, seemingly bent under the weight of a bulky accordion. He looked about sixty; his long white beard, untrimmed and badly neglected, disguised the lower half of his face, while his luxuriant moustache, and his long hair, arranged artist fashion, largely hid the upper part of his countenance.
A beggar? Not at all! This personage would most certainly have spurned such an epithet with a gesture of offended disdain. Live by charity? Not he! Was not his accordion there to show that he possessed a regular means of livelihood? He claimed to be a musician.
He was well known throughout one quarter of Paris, was this poor old man who chanced to be passing along that path in the Bois de Boulogne. He was a perfect specimen of the unsettled type of human being, savagely enamoured of liberty, going from court to court playing with wearied arms the ballads of the moment, indifferent to their melodies, to their rhythms, to their beauties, to their ugliness.... No one knew his real name. They called him Vagualame; for his plaintive notes inspired sad thoughts and an indefinable trouble of the nerves in those unlucky enough to listen to him for a time. This nickname stuck to him.
He was quite a Parisian type, this Vagualame: one of those faces at once odd and classic, such as one comes across in numbers on the pavements, known to all the world, without anyone knowing exactly who they are, how they live, where they go, or whence they come....
The old man had, on his side, caught sight of Bobinette. He hastened towards her as fast as his legs permitted; and as soon as he was near enough to speak to her without raising his voice, he questioned her:
"Well?" It was the interrogation of a master to a subordinate.
"Well?" he repeated. His tone was anxious.
Bobinette calmed the old man's apprehensions with a nod. "It's done," said she.