But Euphémie, once more waving the dull, heavy shovel, yelled:
“Give me my money! My wages! I want my wages!”
II
At six o’clock in the evening Abbé Guitrel got out of the train in Paris and called a cab in the station-yard. Then, driving in the dusk through the murky, rain-swept streets, dotted with lights, he made for Number 5, Rue des Boulangers. There, in a narrow, rugged, hilly street, above the coopers and the cork-dealers, and amidst a smell of casks, lived his old friend Abbé Le Génil, chaplain to the Convent of the Seven Wounds, who was a popular Lenten preacher in one of the most fashionable parishes in Paris. Here Abbé Guitrel was in the habit of putting up, whenever he visited Paris in the hope of expediting the progress of his tardy fortunes. All day long the soles of his buckled shoes tapped discreetly upon the pavements, staircases and floors of all sorts of different houses. In the evening he supped with M. Le Génil. The two old comrades from the seminary spun each other merry yarns, chatted over the rates charged for mass and sermon, and played their game of manille. At ten o’clock Nanette, the maid, rolled into the dining-room an iron bedstead for M. Guitrel, who always gave her when he left the same tip—a brand-new twenty-sou piece.
On this occasion, as in the past, M. Le Génil, who was a tall, stout man, smacked his great hand down on Guitrel’s flinching shoulder, and rumbling out a good-day in his deep organ note, instantly challenged him in his usual jolly style:
“Well, old miser, have you brought me twelve dozen masses at a crown each, or are you, as usual, going to keep to yourself the gold that your pious provincials swamp you with?”
Being a poor man, and knowing that Guitrel was as poor as himself, he regarded this sort of talk as a good jest.
Guitrel went so far as to understand a joke, though, being of a gloomy temperament, he never jested himself. He had, he explained, been obliged to come to Paris to carry out several commissions with which he had been charged, more especially the purchase of books. Would his friend, then, put him up for a day or two, three at the most?