The others began with eating, but Grantaire began with drinking; a pint was soon swallowed.
"Why, you must have a hole in your stomach," said Laigle.
"Well, you have one in your elbow," Grantaire retorted, and after emptying his glass, he added,—
"Oh yes, Laigle of the funeral orations, your coat is old."
"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and I only feel its presence because it keeps me warm. Old coats and old friends are the same thing."
"Grantaire," Joly asked, "have you come from the boulevard?"
"No."
"Laigle and I have just seen the head of the procession pass. It is a marvellous sight."
"How quiet this street is!" Laigle exclaimed. "Who could suspect that Paris is turned topsy-turvy? How easy it is to see that formerly there were monasteries all round here! Du Breuil and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. There was all around where we are now sitting a busy swarm of monks, shod and barefooted, tonsured and bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, little Augustines, great Augustines, old Augustines—"
"Don't talk about monks," Grantaire interrupted, "for it makes me want to scratch myself." Then he exclaimed,—