“Come now, be frank. You have been the victim of some great sorrow; some
disappointment in love, no doubt! It is easy to see that you are a man
who has had some trouble. What age are you?”
“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.”