"In my lodge."
"Oh, the devil!" said Courfeyrac.
"Why! he has been waiting for more than an hour for you to come in."
At the same time a species of young workman, thin, livid, small, marked with freckles, dressed in an old blouse and a pair of patched cotton-velvet trousers, who looked more like a girl attired as a boy than a man, stepped out of the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which was not the least in the world a feminine voice,—
"Monsieur Marius, if you please?"
"He is not here."
"Will he come in to-night?"
"I do not know."
And Courfeyrac added, "I shall not be in to-night."
The young man looked at him intently and asked,—