“It’s an old-fashioned affair; they don’t make ’em now,” replied the carpenter.
Thus the professor learned something by listening to the artisan. Having made sufficient headway with his work, the carpenter turned to Monsieur Bergeret. His sunken, large-featured face, his brown complexion, his hair matted over his forehead, and his little goatee, grey with dust, gave him the look of a bronze figure. His smile, which was gentle, but came with difficulty, showed his white teeth and gave him a youthful look.
“I know you, Monsieur Bergeret.”
“Do you really?”
“Oh yes, I know you. That was something a bit out of the common what you did, and no mistake. You don’t mind my mentioning it, I hope?”
“Not in the least.”
“Well, then, you did something quite out of the common. You cut your own class, refused to have any truck with the brass hats and sky pilots.”
“I hate forgers, my friend,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “Surely that is permissible in a philologist. I have made no secret of my opinions, but I have not gone out of my way to spread them. How did you get to know of them?”
“I will tell you. One sees all sorts of people at the workshop in the Rue Saint-Jacques. All sorts and conditions, big and little. One day I was planing some wood, and I heard Pierre say: ‘That low-down cur of a Bergeret.’ And Paul asks him, ‘Won’t somebody smash his jaw for him?’ And then I realized that you were on the right side in the Affair. There aren’t many like you in this part of Paris.”
“And what do your friends say?”