The woman was overcome at seeing so many fashionable people. As for the man, his features aglow with an unearthly light, his head thrown a little back after the way of the blind, he was in ecstasy, intoxicated with the music. After four years they disappeared. I never saw them again. The man, whom I had seen to be failing, probably died, and the woman, the poor old thing, so unattractive in her blue apron, undoubtedly did not dare to return alone. At Marseilles I saw another blind man, a very old man, seated on a folding stool against a wall. Beside him stood a basket, guarded by a very young dog, who sniffed at all the passers-by and barked after each one. I stopped to talk to the old man. “Do you live all alone?” I asked him. “Oh, no,” he replied. “I have two dogs. But I cannot bring the other one with me. He makes a continual disturbance, leaps and fidgets so much that he never gets fat and any one would think to see him that I don’t give him anything to eat. As a matter of fact, you see, I cannot show him without being ashamed of him. People would suppose that I was allowing him to die of hunger. Anyway I need only one dog here. As for the other I leave him at the house, where he serves as watch dog.” “Oh, you have a house,” I said. “That is to say, I have a room, I call it my house.” “Who does your cooking for you? Who makes the fire at your house?” “I do,” he replied. “I light a match and then by the crackling of the wood I know whether it has caught.” “How do you clean your vegetables?” “Oh, that is easy. I can tell by the feeling when the potatoes are well peeled.” “And the fruits and the salad?” “Oh, that is something we do not have very often.” “I suppose you eat meat.” “Not very often, either. We have bread and vegetables, and when we are rich we buy some cheese.” “Why does your dog sniff so at every one passing by? Why does he bark so spitefully?” “Ah, madam, you see each time that any one hands me a sou, thanks to his grimaces, I give him a little piece of bread. There, look at him now.” At this moment somebody had just thrown a coin into the blind man’s bowl. The old man drew from his pocket a little piece of dry bread. The animal fell upon it with such a cry of joy that one might have supposed he had just received the daintiest titbit in the world. He nearly devoured his master with caresses. “At what time do you eat? Do you go home to your lunch?” “No. I carry my lunch in a basket.” I looked. It contained some crusts of bread and nothing else. “Is that all that you have to eat?” “Why, yes. Like the dog, I don’t ruin my digestion.” “Where do you drink when you are thirsty?” He pointed to a corner of the alley, where there was a little fountain, alongside of which hung a goblet attached to a chain. “And the dog?” “He leads me to the fountain when he is thirsty and I give him his share.” “Do you come here every day?” “Yes. This is the entrance to the baths. We do a good business here.”