The young dramatist smiled. "Good God," he thought, "where do they come from? Where are they going? No place to no place. But always moving, shuffling, waddling, crying out. The sun shines on them. The rain pours on them. It burns. It freezes. To-day they are bright with color. To-morrow they are gray with gloom. But they are always the same, always in motion." The young dramatist stopped on the corner and looking around him spied a figure sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of a building. The figure was an old man. He had a long white beard. He had his legs tucked under him and an upturned tattered hat rested in his lap. His thin face was raised and the sun beat down on it, but his eyes were closed. "Asleep," mused Moisse. He moved closer to him. The man's head was covered with long silky white hair that hung down to his neck and hid his ears. It was uncombed. His face in the sun looked like the face of an ascetic, thin, finely veined. He had a long nose and almost colorless lips and the skin on his cheeks was white. It was drawn tight over his bones, leaving few wrinkles. An expression of peace rested over him--peace and detachment. Of the noise and babble he heard nothing. His eyes were closed to the crowded frantic street. He sat, his head back, his face bathed in the sun, smileless and dreaming. "A beggar," thought Moisse, "asleep, oblivious. Dead. All day he sits in the sun like a saint, immobile. Like one of the old Alexandrian ascetics, like a delicately carved image. He is awake in himself but dead to others. The waves cannot touch him. His thoughts, oh to know his thoughts and his dreams?" Suddenly the eyes of the young dramatist widened. He was looking at the beggar's long hair that hung to his neck. "It's moving," he whispered half aloud. He came closer and stood over the old man and gazed intently at the top of his head. The hair was swaying faintly, each separate fiber moving alone.... It shifted, rose imperceptibly and fell. It quivered and glided.... "Lice," murmured Moisse. He watched. Silent and asleep the old man sat with his thin face to the sun and his hair moved. Vermin swarmed through it, creeping, crawling, tiny and infinitesimal. Every strand was palpitating, shuddering under their mysterious energy. At first Moisse could hardly make them out, but his eyes gradually grew accustomed to the sight. And as he watched he saw the hair swell like waves riding over the water, saw it drop and flutter, coil and uncoil of its own accord. Vermin raised it up, pulled it out, streaming up and down tirelessly in vast armies. They crawled furiously like dust specks blown thick through the white beard. They streamed and shifted and were never still. They moved in and out, from no place to no place, but always moving, frantic and frenzied.