Page:Tales of Today.djvu/188

172 when I heard footsteps, soft, slow footsteps, I could not tell where. I came near taking to my heels, but plucking up my courage I called again and saw a light in the adjacent apartment.

"Who is there?" a voice said.

"A purchaser!" I replied.

The answer came: "It is very late to enter a shop in this manner."

I answered: "I have been waiting for you for more than an hour."

"You can come again to-morrow."

"To-morrow I shall have left Rouen."

I dared not go forward, and he did not come to me. I could still see the light of his lamp, shining on a tapestry where two angels were represented hovering over the dead of a field of battle. It, also, was my property. I said:

"Well! Are you coming?"

"I await you here," he replied.

I arose and went toward him.

In the middle of a great room was a little bit of a man, very little and very fat, phenomenonallyphenomenally [sic] fat, a most repulsive sight to see.

He had a thin beard, composed of straggling, yellowish hairs of unequal length, and not the sign of a hair on his head! Not a hair! As he held his candle up at arm's length to get a better view of me, his cranium appeared to me like a small moon in that immense room crowded with old furniture. His face was wrinkled and swollen, and the eyes were imperceptible.

I made a bargain with him for three chairs which were my property, and paid a large sum for them, money down, merely giving him the number of my