So frivolous time wore on, and Barty found it pleasant to frivol in such pleasant company--very pleasant indeed! But when alone in his garret, with his seton-dressing and dry-cuppings, it was not so gay. He had to confess to himself that his eye was getting slowly worse instead of better; darkening day by day; and a little more retina had been taken in by the strange disease--"la peau de chagrin," as he nicknamed this wretched retina of his, after Balzac's famous story. He could still see with the left of it and at the bottom, but a veil had come over the middle and all the rest; by daylight he could see through this veil, but every object he saw was discolored and distorted and deformed--it was worse than darkness itself; and this was so distressing, and so interfered with the sight of the other eye, that when the sun went down, the total darkness in the ruined portion of his left retina came as a positive relief. He took all this very desperately to heart and had very terrible forebodings. For he had never known an ache or a pain, and had innocently gloried all his life in the singular perfection of his five wits. Then his money was coming to an end; he would soon have to sing in the streets, like Veronese, with Lady Archibald's guitar. Dear Lady Archibald! When things went wrong with her she would always laugh, and say: "Les misères du jour font le bonheur du lendemain!" This he would say or sing to himself over and over again, and go to bed at night quite hopeful and sanguine after a merry day spent among his many friends; and soon sink into sleep, persuaded that his trouble was a bad dream which next morning would scatter and dispel. But when he woke, it was to find the grim reality sitting by his pillow, and he couldn't dry-cup it away. The very sunshine was an ache as he went out and got his breakfast with his blue spectacles on; and black care would link its bony arm in his as he listlessly strolled by the much-sounding sea--and cling to him close as he swam or dived; and he would wonder what he had ever done that so serious and tragic a calamity should have befallen so light a person as himself; who could only dance and sing and play the fool to make people laugh--Rigoletto--Triboulet--a mere grasshopper, no ant or bee or spider, not even a third-class beetle--surely this was not according to the eternal fitness of things!