The shop was at the corner of the porte-cochère leading to the court-yard, and one window looked upon the passage, so that everybody who passed to the other apartments of the house could be seen. The meal was soon arranged by the concierge of the establishment—for Maître Glazer was a widower—and he sat down with his assistant to enjoy it.
‘Has my boy come back?’ asked the apothecary, as they took their places.
‘I have not seen him,’ replied Panurge. ‘His neighbour Theria, the Brabantian, is at home though, for there is a light in his window high up.’
‘They are great friends of Philippe’s,’ said Maître Glazer; ‘both Theria and his wife—a modest, well-favoured body.’
‘Mère Jobert says it is not his wife,’ replied the assistant; ‘but merely a grisette of the city. Oh, the corrupt state of Paris!’
‘She is outwardly well-behaved, and of mild manners,’ returned the apothecary; ‘and we wish to know no further. There is more vice at court than in that mansarde, which is approved of by the world.’
‘Theria does not like her to see much of me,’ said Panurge, conceitedly smoothing three or four hairs that straggled about his chin, where his beard ought to have been.
‘Why not—for fear you should frighten her?’
‘Frighten her! by the mass, it is far otherwise,’ answered the assistant. ‘There are not many gallants in Paris who have been so favoured as myself, or can show such a leg.’
He stretched out the bony limb, and was gazing at it in admiration when the attention of the apothecary was drawn off from some sharp reply he was about to make to Panurge’s vanity, by a hurried tap at the door—a side one leading into the court. The rhapsodies of Panurge were stopped short, and he rose to let in the supposed patient—for there was small chance of its being any one else at that hour.