Toward twelve o'clock he found himself near the fountain in St. Michael's Place; tired and hot, he took a drink, and, seating himself on the curbstone near by, began to eat the piece of bread that Pelagie had given him that morning. His appetite was good, and he enjoyed his dry crust better than many a rich man did his sumptuous dinner that day. His little teeth went so busily and vigorously to work, that a hackney-coachman belonging to the coach-stand in the place, and who was lazily contemplating humanity from his box-seat, after watching him awhile with admiration, threw him a sou, telling him to buy some sausage, because he deserved something for the way in which he attacked that piece of brick-bat.
"He has teeth like a rat," cried the coachman, grinning, to one of his comrades; "the way he nibbles that crust, that's as hard as the stone he's sitting on, is a sight!"
Marcel took the sou, and returned a look of such smiling gratitude that the observant coachman again remarked to his friend that that little chap had eyes like the gazelle's in the Garden of Plants; "they're just as soft and tender," added he, "only blue." But the child dared not spend the money on himself—had not Pelagie told him to bring her back everything he got? So he put it into the bag with the old iron, and once more went to work. Steadily and earnestly he plodded on, all his little faculties concentrated on his task, so that at five in the afternoon his leathern bag was full, and his basket piled up and pressed down.
Glad and triumphant, with some hope of kind words this time at least, he turned toward the Rue de la Parcheminerie, and reached the wretched house just as Pelagie was pushing her empty handcart through the narrow passage into the yard, where it was put up under a shed for the night. He climbed the staircase and stood waiting for her on the landing-place before the door of her room.
"You here!" she cried when she perceived him. "What's brought you back so soon, you little vaurien?" [Footnote 114]
[Footnote 114: Worth-nothing.]
"My basket and my bag are both full, madam," replied Marcel, trembling as he looked up into the furious eyes of the drunken virago.
"I shall soon see that." She pushed him violently into the room. "Now, give me the bag."
She snatched it from him as she spoke and emptied out the contents on the floor.