"Idle man-about-town": O, how much is contained in that definition! The flâneur practices a kind of refined street theater, thumbing his nose at hurrying urban crowds by loitering ostentatiously. For Baudelaire - who admired famous flâneurs like Nerval, who is said to have walked a lobster around Paris on a pale blue leash - the "perfect flâneur" is that urbanite who is neither aloof from the crowd nor surrendered to it, but both at once; this "kaleidoscopic" faculty allows him to perceive the subtle eruptions of the infinite into the everyday. (Clearly, the flâneur does not suffer from ennui, nor is he blasé.) See: DRIFTER, IDLER, INDOLENT, LOUNGE.