A clean-shaven man, whose suspicious little eyes were perpetually blinking, turned to a young woman.
"Look here, Ernestine, my beauty, are you certain the Beadle understood that we should be waiting for him here?"
Big Ernestine, who was crouching on the ground and warming her hands at a wood fire, throwing up clouds of smoke, shrugged her shoulders.
"Stop it, do! You say things over and over again, like a clock, Nibet!... Since I've told you yes—yes it is—there now, and be hanged to you!... You don't by chance fancy the Beadle has been made a mouthful of, do you?"
Roars of laughter greeted this. Nibet was not one of the inner circle; he was not much of a favourite in the band of Numbers. It is true that they reckoned him a comrade, useful, faithful, that they felt safe with him; but they bore him a grudge because of his regular employment, because of his position, because he was an official.... And, first and last, his warder's uniform impressed the jail birds unpleasantly.
But Nibet was not the man to allow himself to be intimidated.
"All the same," said he, "I ask where the three of them have got to?... If they know the mushroom bed, they should have been back long ago!" He shouted to an old woman.
"Eh, Toulouche, tell us the time!"
But Mother Toulouche shook her head.
"I haven't a watch!"