"The Albinos called the Chourineur a freed convict, worker at the wood that floats at St. Paul's Quay; frozen in the winter, scorched in the summer, from twelve to fifteen hours a day in the water; half man, half frog; that's my description," said Rodolph's companion, making him a military salute with his left hand. "Well, now, and you, my master, this is your first appearance in the Cité. I don't mean anything to offend; but you entered head foremost against my skull, and beating the drum on my carcass. By all that's ugly, what a rattling you made, especially with these blows with which you doubled me up! I never can forget them—thick as buttons—what a torrent! But you have some trade besides 'polishing off' the Chourineur?"
"I am a fan-painter, and my name is Rodolph."
"A fan-painter! Ah! that's the reason, then, that your hands are so white," added the Chourineur. "If all your fellow workmen are like you, there must be a tidy lot of you. But, as you are a workman, what brings you to a tapis-franc in the Cité, where there are only prigs, cracksmen or freed convicts like myself, and who only come here because we cannot go elsewhere? This is no place for you. Honest mechanics have their coffee-shops, and don't talk slang."
"I come here because I like good company."
"Gammon!" said the Chourineur, shaking his head with an air of doubt. "I found you in the passage of Bras Rouge. Well, man, never mind. You say you don't know him?"
"What do you mean with all your nonsense about your Bras Rouge? Let him go to the—"
"Stay, master of mine. You, perhaps, distrust me; but you are wrong, and if you like I will tell you my history; but that is on condition that you teach me how to give those precious thumps which settled my business so quickly. What say you?"
"I agree, Chourineur; tell me your story, and Goualeuse will also tell hers."
"Very well," replied the Chourineur; "it is not weather to turn a mangy cur out-of-doors, and it will be an amusement. Do you agree, Goualeuse?"
"Oh, certainly; but my story is a very short one," said Fleur-de-Marie.