"I'd have done it for nothing, but I'll take the pourboire," replied the concierge, with a laugh.
"This one has been paid, too," said Sans-Cravate to himself; "but he isn't so honest as the other; he don't say so."
They went up to the apartment hired in the name of Madame Albert: it was on the second floor, and consisted of two pretty rooms and two dressing-rooms; the paper was all new, the paint fresh; nothing was lacking but the furniture.
"The deuce!" thought Sans-Cravate, as he looked over the apartment. "This part of the job won't go all alone as the other did. All I had to do then was to take everything I found; but I don't know where to put the different things here. If I put a bed there, and they want it somewhere else; if I put a commode over yonder, and a couch in this corner, and they don't look right,—why, they won't be satisfied. The young lady ought to be here, to tell me what to do. However, I'll just do the best I can according to my own ideas; and when she comes, if it ain't right, I'll change it."
The concierge approved this reasoning, and they went about their task. Sans-Cravate worked with redoubled zeal and ardor; he was determined to fulfil his promise and satisfy Albert. He worked so hard, and spurred on the concierge so successfully, that the clock had not struck two when all the furniture was in place in the new apartment.
But the perspiration poured from the face of the messenger, who was overdone with fatigue and sorely in need of rest and refreshment.
"Monsieur Albert told me to wait," he said to the concierge, "but I don't think I need wait in the apartment; there's a wine shop close by, and I'll go there after I've sent the wagon away. Be kind enough to come and tell me as soon as they arrive, and I'll be here in two strides."
"All right," said the concierge; "you can go and take a bite at the wine shop, and I'll let you know."
Sans-Cravate paid and dismissed his carrier, then went to the wine shop, seated himself at a table, and ordered a breakfast which he had well earned by his labor, and which he ate with much greater zest than all the extras he had discussed with Jean Ficelle.
He had been at the wine shop a long while, and his appetite was beginning to be appeased, when the concierge appeared and said: