Everywhere was darkness and chill and the listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and the passions of man are sunk in lethargy.
Only a creature infinitely young could have held firm in face of such dejection, only eyes as alert and wakeful as those of this wayfaring boy could possibly have looked undaunted at the shabby streets with their flaunting travesty of joy exhibited in the dripping awnings of the deserted _cafes_, that offered _Biere, Billard_, and yet again _Biere_ to an impassive world.
But the eyes were wakeful, the soul of the adventurer was infinitely young.

He looked at it all with a certain steadfastness that seemed to say, "Yes, I see you! You are hideous, slatternly, unfriendly; but through all the disguise I recognize you.

Through the mask I trace the features--subtle, alluring, fascinating.

You are Paris! Paris!" The idea quickened action as a draught of wine might quicken thought; his hand involuntarily tightened upon his valise, his body braced itself afresh, and, as if resigning himself finally to chance, that deity loved of all true adventurers, he stepped from the pavement into the greasy roadway.
Seeing him move, a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a _fiacre_; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at the many hotels that rub shoulders in that uninteresting region.
One after the other he reviewed and rejected them, moving onward with the excitement that is born of absolute uncertainty.

Onward he went, without pause, until the pavement was intersected by a side-street, and peering up through the misty light he read the legend, "rue de Dunkerque." Rue de Dunkerque! It conveyed nothing to his mind.