On Rue du Helder, near the boulevard, in front of a handsome house, three street messengers had their regular stand.
On the afternoon of which we are writing, all three were at their post. One lay at full length on his crochets, which he had placed on the ground, horizontally, in such wise as to form a sort of cot-bed; it was rather narrow, but its occupant had become so accustomed to it that he had no difficulty in maintaining his place, and never fell over the side.
Another was sitting on a stone bench against the house. He was smoking a pipe, and had in his hands a disgustingly greasy and dirty pack of cards, with which he was apparently practising the false cut and divers other tricks of that sort.
The third messenger was on his feet, leaning against the wall, with his eyes fixed on the topmost floor of a high building almost opposite.
The man lying on the crochets seemed to be in the prime of life; he was of medium height, but the breadth of his shoulders and the size of the muscles in his sinewy limbs pointed him out as a man with whom it would be dangerous to quarrel. His face was frank and good-humored; his small, light blue eyes expressed recklessness and merriment; his nose was rather large, and sometimes red at the end; his full lips denoted a kindly and obliging disposition; and his abundant light hair, which blew about at the pleasure of the wind, surmounted a high forehead, wherein the brain must have had ample room to exercise its faculties.
He was dressed like most messengers,—a jacket and loose trousers; but he wore no neckerchief; his shirt, fastened by a button, disclosed a neck much whiter than one would have supposed from the color of his hands and face. The invariable habit of wearing nothing about his neck at any season of the year, even when the cold was most severe, was responsible for the sobriquet of Sans-Cravate, which had come to be the only name by which the messenger was known to the persons who employed him, and even to most of his friends.
The person seated on the stone bench, who seemed intent upon his cards, was short, and heavily pock-marked; his hair was dark brown and very thick, and hung low over a narrow forehead; the man's face indicated intelligence and cunning, and the evil expression of his gray eyes seemed to forbid the judgment we are accustomed to form of a person with a low forehead. A small nose, much too retroussé, tightly closed lips, and a protruding chin, made of Monsieur Jean Ficelle a decidedly ugly individual, and one who would by no means inspire the confidence which we like to feel in a messenger, unless his unusual mobility of feature were successful in deceiving those who tried to read his thoughts.
The third messenger, who stood against the wall, with his eyes constantly fixed on the attics of the opposite house, was a tall, slender young man of graceful figure; although he also wore loose trousers and a jacket, there was in his bearing an indefinable something, which, while perhaps it could not be called refinement, distinguished it from the vulgar slouchiness of his companions; and as, generally speaking, a person's face almost always fulfils the promise of his bearing, so this young man, whose features were regular and attractive, had not the usual expression of those of his calling. A high, well-shaped forehead; beautiful black hair, brushed aside with a lack of coquetry that was not without charm; brown eyes, with a tender and melancholy expression; a mouth of an ordinary type, supplied with handsome teeth; an oval face, almost always pale, but indicative of a delicate constitution rather than of ill health—such was that one of the three messengers who was known as Paul, and who, in truth, seemed but ill adapted for his trade.
"If Bastringuette hasn't sold her violets, I shall have a chance to sup in my mind's eye to-day. Business is dull, but the appetite keeps right along. Crédié! what a lot of rooms there are to let in my belly! and unfurnished lodgings in my stomach! How the devil am I to furnish it all?
| "'Dip your bread, Marie, dip your bread, |
| Dip your bread in clear water!' |