One of the men with the villainous aspect, whom we have before described as being very pale, hiding his left hand, and continually pulling his cap over his brows, leaned towards the ogress, who was carefully wiping the table where Rodolph had taken his seat, and said to her, in a hoarse tone, "Hasn't the Gros-Boiteux been here to-day?"
"Was Calebasse with him,--the daughter of Martial, who was guillotined? You know whom I mean,--the Martials of the Ile de Ravageur?"
"What! do you take me for a spy, with your questions? Do you think I watch my customers?" said the ogress, in a brutal tone.
"I have an appointment to-night with the Gros-Boiteux and the Schoolmaster," replied the fellow; "we have some business together."
"That's your affair,--a set of ruffians, as you are, altogether."
"Ruffians!" said the man, much incensed; "it is such ruffians you get your living by."
"Will you hold your jaw?" said the Amazon, with a threatening gesture, and lifting, as she spoke, the pitcher she held in her hand.
The man resumed his place, grumbling as he did so.
"The Gros-Boiteux has, perhaps, stayed to give that young fellow Germain, who lives in the Rue du Temple, his gruel," said he, to his companion.
"No, not quite, but to make him more careful in future. It appears he has 'blown the gaff' in the job at Nantes, so Bras Rouge declares."
"Why, that is Gros-Boiteux's affair; he has only just left prison, and has his hands full already."
Fleur-de-Marie had followed the Chourineur into the tavern of the ogress, and he, responding to a nod given to him by the young scamp with the jaded aspect, said, "Ah, Barbillon! what, pulling away at the old stuff?"
"Yes; I would rather fast, and go barefoot any day, than be without my drops for my throttle, and the weed for my pipe," said the rapscallion, in a thick, low, hoarse voice, without moving from his seat, and puffing out volumes of tobacco-smoke.
"Good evening, Fleur-de-Marie," said the ogress, looking with a prying eye on the clothes of the poor girl,--clothes which she had lent her. After her scrutiny, she said, in a tone of coarse satisfaction, "It's really a pleasure--so it is--to lend one's good clothes to you; you are as clean as a kitten, or else I would never have trusted you with that shawl. Such a beauty as that orange one is, I would never have trusted it to such gals as Tourneuse and Boulotte; but I have taken every care _on_ you ever since you came here six weeks ago; and, if the truth must be said, there is not a tidier nor more nicer girl than you in all the Cité; that there ain't; though you be al'ays so sad like, and too particular."