The palace was grey and solid. Nurses, some in the white caps of their
native province, others with the satin streamers of the _nounou_, marched
sedately two by two, wheeling perambulators and talking. Brightly dressed
children trundled hoops or whipped a stubborn top. As he watched them, Dr
Porhoet's lips broke into a smile, and it was so tender that his thin
face, sallow from long exposure to subtropical suns, was transfigured.
He no longer struck you merely as an insignificant little man with hollow
cheeks and a thin grey beard; for the weariness of expression which was
habitual to him vanished before the charming sympathy of his smile. His
sunken eyes glittered with a kindly but ironic good-humour. Now passed a
guard in the romantic cloak of a brigand in comic opera and a peaked cap
like that of an _alguacil_. A group of telegraph boys in blue stood round
a painter, who was making a sketch--notwithstanding half-frozen fingers.
Here and there, in baggy corduroys, tight jackets, and wide-brimmed hats,
strolled students who might have stepped from the page of Murger's
immortal romance.
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