midnight
You will meet him , with his worn , flat old face , with no light in his eyes , with no strength in his limbs , dragging himself with a dazed air along the boulevard -- the belt of his Venus , of his beloved city . What was his want ? The sabre of the National Guard , a permanent stock-pot , a decent plot in Pere Lachaise , and , for his old age , a little gold honestly earned . _ HIS _ Monday is on Sunday , his rest a drive in a hired carriage -- a country excursion during which his wife and children glut themselves merrily with dust or bask in the sun ; his dissipation is at the restaurateur 's , whose poisonous dinner has won renown , or at some family ball , where he suffocates till midnight . Some fools are surprised at the phantasmagoria of the monads which they see with the aid of the microscope in a drop of water ; but what would Rabelais ' Gargantua , -- that misunderstood figure of an audacity so sublime , -- what would that giant say , fallen from the celestial spheres , if he amused himself by contemplating the motions of this secondary life of Paris , of which here is one of the formulae ? Have you seen one of those little constructions -- cold in summer , and with no other warmth than a small stove in winter -- placed beneath the vast copper dome which crowns the Halle-auble ? Madame is there by morning .