Nibet smiled:
"Why, it's just because he is such a simpleton, and because he hasn't a mite of memory that we can use him safely!"
"That's true!" said Mother Toulouche, somewhat reassured.
She called to Cranajour:
"Come along, Cranajour, and just tell us where you dined this evening!"
The simpleton seemed to make a prodigious effort of memory, seized his head between his hands, closed his eyes, and racked his brains: after quite a long silence, he declared emphatically and with a distressed air:
"Faith, I can't tell you now!"
Nibet, who had closely watched this performance, nodded:
"It's quite all right," he said.
The cellars below Mother Toulouche's store were extensive, dark, and ill-smelling. The walls glistened with exuding damp, and the ground was a sticky mass of foul mud, of all sorts of refuse, of putrefying matter.