"I don't know. I can't make myself remember—not anyhow!... And it's a long time since I sold the goods!"
Mother Toulouche shrugged in turn:
"A long time!" she grumbled. "What a wretched job! Why, it's only two hours since—barely that!... It's true," she went on, with a pitying look at the shabby, down-at-heel fellow, who had spread out his seventeen francs on the table, "it's true that you're known not to have two ha'p'orths of memory, and that at the end of an hour you have forgotten what you've done!"
"That's right enough," answered Cranajour.
"Let's have done with it, then," cried Mother Toulouche.
She held out a repulsive-looking specimen of old clothes:
"Be off with you! Go and pawn this academician's cast-off! When the comrades catch a sight of this bit of stuff to the fore, they'll understand they can come without danger!... No cops about the store on the lookout, are there?"
Mother Toulouche took the precaution to advance to the threshold of her store, cast a rapid glance around—not a suspicious person, nor a sign of one to be seen:
"A good thing," muttered she, "but I was sure of it! Those police spies are going to give us some peace for a bit!... Likely the whole lot of them are on this Dollon business! Isn't it so, Cranajour?"
As she retreated into her store again Mother Toulouche knocked against that individual, who had not budged: he had hung over his arm respectfully the miserable bit of stuff that had been styled an academician's robe: