He was bent over, muddied, and stooped and shivered on his long legs like a plucked wading bird. It was Bixiou. Yes, Parisians, your very own Bixiou, the ferociously charming Bixiou, the fanatical satirist who has so delighted you for fifteen years with his writings and caricatures.... Oh, poor man, and how painful to see him like that. Without the familiar grimace when he came in, I would not have recognised him. His head was bent over to one side, and his cane was pushed into his mouth like a clarinet. The illustrious and gloomy jester then moved to the centre of the room and staggered against my table as he said despondently: "Have pity on a blind man!..." It was such a good take-off that I couldn't stop myself laughing. The Arctic-cold response came immediately: "If you think I'm joking ... just look into my eyes." He then turned two large, white, sightless eyes towards me: "I've gone blind, my dear, blind for life.... That's what comes from writing with vitriol. I have burned out the candle of my eyes out doing the damned job ... to the stub!" he added showing me his desiccated eyelids with no trace of an eyelash. I was so overcome, I couldn't find anything to say. My silence troubled him: "Are you working?" “--No, Bixiou, I'm having lunch. Would you like to join me?" He didn't reply, but I could see clearly from his quivering nostrils that he was dying to say yes. I took his hand and sat him down beside me. While I served him, the poor devil sniffed at the food and chuckled: "Oh, it smells good, this. I'm really going to enjoy it; and it will be an age before I eat again! A sou's worth of bread every morning, as I traipse through the ministries, is all I get.... I tell you, I'm really badgering the ministries now--it's the only work I do--I am trying to get permission to run a tobacconist's shop.... What else can I do; I've got to eat. I can't draw; I can't write... Dictation?... But dictate what?... I haven't a clue, me; I can't think of a thing to write. My trade was to look at the lunacies of Paris and hold a mirror up to them; but I haven't got what it takes now.... Then I thought about a tobacconist's shop; not in the boulevards of course, I can't expect those kind of favours, being neither a show girl's mother, nor a field officer's widow. No. I'm just looking for a small shop in the provinces, somewhere far away, say a spot in the Vosges. I will sell a hell of a clay pipe, and console myself by wrapping tobacco in my contemporaries' writings.