"I preferred the Duc de Bordeaux."
"Well, I know Louis XVII., and I prefer him."
"How dear meat is, Mame Patagon!"
"Oh, dont talk about it! Butcher's meat is a horror,—a horrible horror. It is only possible to buy bones now."
Here the rag-picker interposed,—
"Ladies, trade does not go on well at all, and the rubbish is abominable. People do not throw away anything now, but eat it all."
"There are poorer folk than you, Vargoulême."
"Ah, that's true," the rag-picker replied deferentially, "for I have a profession."
There was a pause, and the rag-picker, yielding to that need of display which is at the bottom of the human heart, added,—
"When I go home in the morning I empty out my basket and sort the articles; that makes piles in my room. I put the rags in a box, the cabbage-stalks in a tub, the pieces of linen in my cupboard, the woollen rags in my chest of drawers, old papers on the corner of the window, things good to eat in my porringer, pieces of glass in the fire-place, old shoes behind the door, and bones under my bed."