Gavroche pressed him.

"What are you going to do to-night?"

Montparnasse again became serious, and said, mincing his words,—

"Some things."

And he suddenly changed the conversation.

"By the bye—"

"What?"

"Something that happened the other day. Just fancy. I meet a bourgeois, and he makes me a present of a sermon, and a purse. I put it in my pocket, a moment later I feel for it, and there was nothing there."

"Only the sermon," said Gavroche.

"But where are you going now?" Montparnasse continued.