He reached the middle of the arch, and looked forebodingly
at the water.
"Wretched weather for drowning yourself," said a ragged old woman, who
grinned at him; "isn't the Seine cold and dirty?"
His answer was a ready smile, which showed the frenzied nature of his
courage; then he shivered all at once as he saw at a distance, by the
door of the Tuileries, a shed with an inscription above it in letters
twelve inches high: THE ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY'S APPARATUS.
A vision of M. Dacheux rose before him, equipped by his philanthropy,
calling out and setting in motion the too efficacious oars which break
the heads of drowning men, if unluckily they should rise to the
surface; he saw a curious crowd collecting, running for a doctor,
preparing fumigations, he read the maundering paragraph in the papers,
put between notes on a festivity and on the smiles of a ballet-dancer;
he heard the francs counted down by the prefect of police to the
watermen. As a corpse, he was worth fifteen francs; but now while he
lived he was only a man of talent without patrons, without friends,
without a mattress to lie on, or any one to speak a word for him--a
perfect social cipher, useless to a State which gave itself no trouble
about him.
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