Do I call this a profession? No, merely a stop-gap which allows me to
live and wait for something to turn up. I sometimes have forebodings
that I shall go on like this forever, waiting for something which will
never turn up; that this temporary occupation may become only too
permanent.

There is an old clerk in the office who has never had any other
occupation, whose appearance is a kind of warning to me. He has a red
face--the effect of the office stove, I think--straight, white hair,
the expression when spoken to of a startled sheep-gentle, astonished,
slightly flurried. His attenuated back is rounded off with a stoop
between the neck and shoulders. He can hardly keep his hands from
shaking. His signature is a work of art. He can stick at his desk for
six hours without stirring. While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes
at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning
in a paper bag. On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the
place of his pen, and his can of worms serves instead of inkstand.

He and I have already one point of resemblance. The old clerk was once
crossed in love with a flowergirl, one Mademoiselle Elodie. He has told
me this one tragedy of his life. In days gone by I used to think this
thirty-year-old love-story dull and commonplace; to-day I understand
M. Jupille; I relish him even. He and I have become sympathetic. I no
longer make him move from his seat by the fire when I want to ask him a
question: I go to him. On Sundays, on the quays by the Seine, I pick him
out from the crowd intent upon the capture of tittlebats, because he is
seated upon his handkerchief. I go up to him and we have a talk.

"Fish biting, Monsieur Jupille?"