Moisse, the young dramatist, stood against one of the office buildings as the throngs spilled past him on their ways home. His eyes were fixed on the distant gloom of the sky which hung beyond the drizzel and the fuzzy glare of light like a vast black froth.
“It is so silent,” mused Moisse. “Millions of miles without a sound. Man and his accomplishments are infinitesimal,” went on the young dramatist as the swelling throng brushed and buffeted against him, “but his ego is infinite. Only by thought can he reach the stars.”
He was thoughtless for a moment, holding his position with difficulty as the crowds pressed past. Then he resumed:
“None of them looks at me. None of them imagines I am thinking of the stars. How startled these fat evil-smelling men and women would be if they could see my thought for a moment as they crashed along their tiny ways. But nevertheless I don’t eat tonight,” he murmured suddenly, as if awakening. And the idea plunged him into a series of reflections from which he emerged with a frown and looked about him.
A short thick man with an unshaven face was shuffling past. His skin was broken under his growth of beard with red and purple sores. His mouth hung open, his eyes stared ahead of him and his head was bent forward. Moisse thought of the body concealed by the layers of caked rags which covered the man, and shuddered.
“He never bathes,” mused the young dramatist. “I wonder what a creature like that does.” And he followed him slowly.
At the corner the man stopped and blew his nose violently with his fingers. Another block and he stopped again, bending over in the midst of the crowd and straightening with a cigar butt in his hand. He eyed the thing critically. It was flattened at the end where feet had passed over it. The man thrust it between his lips and shuffled on.
In a vestibule he extracted a blackened match from his pocket and with shaking fingers lighted the butt. When it burned he blew a cloud of smoke, and taking it out of his mouth regarded it with satisfaction.
Several in the throng noticed him, their eyes resting with disapproval and sometimes hate upon the figure. Once a crossing policeman spied him and followed him with his gaze until he was lost to view.
Moisse kept abreast of him and together they turned into an alley that led behind a hotel. The man’s eyes never wavered, but remained fixed in the direction he was moving.