“This is my kennel; I appear in state in the Rue de Bondy, in the new apartments which our druggist has taken for Florine; we hold the house-warming this evening.”
Etienne Lousteau wore black trousers and beautifully-varnished boots; his coat was buttoned up to his chin; he probably meant to change his linen at Florine’s house, for his shirt collar was hidden by a velvet stock. He was trying to renovate his hat by an application of the brush.
“Let us go,” said Lucien.
“Not yet. I am waiting for a bookseller to bring me some money; I have not a farthing; there will be play, perhaps, and in any case I must have gloves.”
As he spoke, the two new friends heard a man’s step in the passage outside.
“There he is,” said Lousteau. “Now you will see, my dear fellow, the shape that Providence takes when he manifests himself to poets. You are going to behold Dauriat, the fashionable bookseller, in all his glory, but first you shall see the bookseller of of the Quai des Augustins, the pawnbroker, the marine store dealer of the trade, the Norman ex-greengrocer.—Come along, old Tartar!” shouted Lousteau.
“Here am I,” said a voice like a cracked bell.
“Brought the money with you?”
“Money? There is no money now in the trade,” retorted the other, a young man who eyed Lucien curiously.
“Imprimis, you owe me fifty francs,” Lousteau continued.