"Well, then, it's a bargain."
"But how about the earnest? I must have something down."
"Here is my last button, and when I have no more,—yet there are others left," said Cardillac, tearing off a button covered with cloth from his ragged blue coat, and then tearing off the covering with his nails, he showed the Gros-Boiteux that, instead of a button-mould, it contained a piece of forty francs. "You see I can pay deposit," he added, "when the affair is arranged."
"That's the ticket, old fellow!" said the Gros-Boiteux. "And as you are soon going out, and have got rhino to work with, I can put you up to another thing,—a real good go,—the cheese,—a regular affair which my woman and myself have been cooking up, and which only wants the finishing stroke. Only imagine a lone street in a deserted quarter, a ground floor, looking on one side into an obscure alley, and on the other a garden, and here two old people, who go to roost with the cocks and hens since the riots, and, for fear of being robbed, they have concealed behind a panel, in a pot of preserves, a quantity of gold; my woman found it out by gossiping with the servant. But I tell you this will be a dearer job than t'other, for it is in hard cash, and all cooked ready to eat and drink."
"We'll arrange it, be assured. But you haven't worked over well since you left the central."
"Yes, I have had a pretty fair chance. I got together some trifles which brought me nearly sixty pounds. One of my best bites was a pull at two women who lodged in the same house with me in the Passage de la Brasserie."
"What, at Daddy Micou's?"
"Yes."
"And your Josephine?"
"Just the same; a real ferret as ever. She cooks with the old couple I have mentioned to you, and so smelt out the pot with the golden honey in it."