eleven A.M.
He looked as though he bore on his bent shoulders the weight of all the ill-spent lives in Christendom . He was a damp , unwholesome-looking man , whose appearance suggested long confinement in a cellar . He was pale and hollow-eyed , and almost mouldy ; altogether a most cadaverous-looking person . He was always attired , even at eleven A.M. , in an old dress suit , green and threadbare with age , and a furry tall hat , into which garments he seemed to have grown and taken root . But despite the decay of his person and his attire , there was a certain degree of aristocratic refinement about Voblinsky 's features , last ghastly traces of his ancient nobility . He vaguely recalled to my mind a long-ago Continental trip of my childhood , and an unfortunate elephant in the Marseilles Jardin des Plantes who , from long inactivity in the corner of his cage , had become overgrown with moss . There was the same incongruous touch of erstwhile nobility , the same decay , the same earthy smell .