All day the crowds surrounded me, laughing loudly; all the voyous making those jokes for which I found no repartee.

The pavement was sometimes blocked; the passing coachmen stood up in their boxes to look over at me, small infants were elevated on shoulders to behold me; not the gravest or most sorrowful came by without stopping to gaze at me and go away with rejoicing faces.

The boulevards rang to their laughter--all Paris laughed! For seven days I sat there at the appointed times, meeting the eye of nobody, and lifting my coffee with fingers which trembled with embarrassment at this too great conspicuosity! Those mournful hours passed, one by the year, while the idling bourgeois and the travellers made ridicule; and the rabble exhausted all effort to draw plays of wit from me.
I have told you that I carried no placard, that my costume was elegant, my demeanour modest in all degree.
"How, then, this excitement ?" would be your disposition to inquire.

"Why this sensation ?" It is very simple.

My hair had been shaved off, all over my ears, leaving only a little above the back of the neck, to give an appearance of far-reaching baldness, and on my head was painted, in ah! so brilliant letters of distinctness: Theatre Folie-Rouge Revue de Printemps Tous les Soirs Such was the necessity to which I was at that time reduced! One has heard that the North Americans invent the most singular advertising, but I will not believe they surpass the Parisian.