At the moment they entered a lively argument broke out between two of the frequenters of the place. One of them was a young fellow whose face was hidden by a dense thicket of beard of several distinct shades. By way of a balance to this wealth of hair on his chin, a precocious baldness had despoiled his forehead, which was as bare as a billiard ball. He vainly strove to conceal the nakedness of the land by brushing forward a tuft of hairs so scanty that they could almost be counted. He wore a black coat worn at the elbows, and revealing whenever he raised his arms too high a ventilator under the armpits. His trousers might have once been black, but his boots, which had never been new, seemed to have already gone round the world two or three times on the feet of the Wandering Jew. Schaunard noticed that his new friend Colline and the young fellow with the big beard nodded to one another. "You know the gentleman?" said he to the philosopher. "Not exactly," replied the latter, "but I meet him sometimes at the National Library. I believe that he is a literary man." "He wears the garb of one, at any rate," said Schaunard. The individual with whom this young fellow was arguing was a man of forty, foredoomed, by a big head wedged between his shoulders without any break in the shape of a neck, to the thunderstroke of apoplexy. Idiocy was written in capital letters on his low forehead, surmounted by a little black skull-cap. His name was Monsieur Mouton, and he was a clerk at the town hall of the 4th Arrondissement, where he acted as registrar of deaths. "Monsieur Rodolphe," exclaimed he, in the squeaky tones of a eunuch, shaking the young fellow by a button of his coat which he had laid hold of. "Do you want to know my opinion? Well, all your newspapers are of no use whatsoever. Come now, let us put a supposititious case. I am the father of a family, am I not? Good. I go to the cafe for a game at dominoes? Follow my argument now." "Go on," said Rodolphe. "Well," continued Daddy Mouton, punctuating each of his sentences by a blow with his fist which made the jugs and glasses on the table rattle again. "Well, I come across the papers. What do I see? One which says black when the other says white, and so on and so on. What is all that to me? I am the father of a family who goes to the cafe--" "For a game at dominoes," said Rodolphe. "Every evening," continued Monsieur Mouton. "Well, to put a case--you understand?" "Exactly," observed Rodolphe. "I read an article which is not according to my views. That puts me in a rage, and I fret my heart out, because you see, Monsieur Rodolphe, newspapers are all lies. Yes, lies," he screeched in his shrillest falsetto, "and the journalists are robbers." "But, Monsieur Mouton--" "Yes, brigands," continued the clerk. "They are the cause of all our misfortunes; they brought about the Revolution and its paper money, witness Murat." "Excuse me," said Rodolphe, "you mean Marat."