"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked she sharply.
"Nothing...."
"What are you going to do with that?"
Cranajour seemed to reflect:
"Haven't I told you," grumbled Mother Toulouche, "to go and stick it up outside?... Don't say you've gone and forgotten already!"
"No, no!" protested Cranajour, hastening to obey orders.
"What a specimen!" thought Mother Toulouche, whilst counting over the seventeen francs.
Cranajour was a remarkably queer fish, beyond question. How had he got into connection with Mother Toulouche and her intimates? That remained a mystery. One fine day this seedy specimen of humanity was found among the "comrades" exchanging vague remarks with one and another. He stuck to them in all their shifting from this place to that: no one had been able to get out of him what his name was, nor where he came from, for he was afflicted with a memory like a sieve—he could not remember things for two hours together. A feeble-minded, poor sort of fellow, with not a halfpenny's worth of wickedness in him, always ready to do a hand's turn for anyone: to judge by his looks he might have been any age between forty and seventy, for there is nothing like privations and misery to alter the looks of a man! Faced by this queer fish, with a brain like a sieve, they had christened him "Crâne à jour"—and the nickname had stuck to this anonymous individual. Besides, was not Cranajour the most complaisant of fellows, the least exacting of collaborators—always content with what was given him, always willing to do his best!
As to Mother Toulouche; she kept a little shop on the quay of the Clock. The sign over her little store read: