Cousin Pons

ABOUT three o'clock in the afternoon, one day in October 1844, an old man of some sixty years (though anyone who saw him would have thought him older) was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, with his nose thrust forward and a smug expression on his lips, like a merchant who has just made an excellent deal, or a bachelor emerging from a lady's boudoir, pleased with his prowess - in Paris the expression of male self-satisfaction can go no further.