"Just one; the liquor's good. Here's t'ye again, Daddy Micou!"
"Here's to you again, my covey! I was saying that the other day my cousin sent me a customer whom I can't make out. Imagine a mother and daughter, who looked very queer and uncommon seedy; they had their whole kit in a pocket-handkerchief. Well, there warn't much to be expected out of this, for they had no papers, and they lodge by the fortnight; yet, since they've been here, they haven't moved any more than a dormouse. No men come to see them; and yet they're not bad-looking, if they weren't so thin and pale, particularly the daughter, about sixteen,—with such a pair of black eyes,—oh, such eyes!"
"Halloa, dad! You're off again. What do these women do?"
"I tell you I don't know; they must be respectable, and yet, as they receive letters without any address, it looks queer."
"What do you mean?"
"They sent, this morning, my nephew André to the Poste-Restante to inquire for a letter addressed to 'Madame X. Z.' The letter was expected from Normandy, from a town called Aubiers. They wrote that down on paper, so that André might get the letter by giving these particulars. You see, it does not look quite the thing for women to take the name of 'X.' and 'Z.' And yet they never have any male visitors."
"They won't pay you."
"Oh, my fine fellow, they don't catch an old bird like me with chaff. They took a room without a fireplace, and I made them pay the twenty francs down for the fortnight. They are, perhaps, ill, for they have not been down for the last two days. It is not indigestion that ails them, for I don't think they have cooked anything since they came here."
"If you had all such customers, Father Micou—"
"Oh, they go and come. If I lodge people without passports, why, I also have different people. I have now two travelling gents, a postman, the leader of the band at the Café des Aveugles, and a lady of fortune,—all most respectable persons, such as save the reputation of a house, if the commissary is inclined to look a little too closely into things; they are not night-lodgers, but tenants of the broad sunshine."