Yes, anything hot would be good, even milk; but where could we get it?
"Ah, you shall see!"
We had not gone far when it gave me a start to recognize a figure that we had seen in the Boul' Mich' on our way to the Soleil d'Or. It was that of an outcast of the boulevards, now slinking through the shadows toward the river. We had been accosted by him in front of one of the brilliant cafés, as, trembling and rubbing his hands, a picture of hopeless dejection and misery, and in a quavering voice he begged us to buy him a drink of brandy.
It probably saved him from an attack of delirium tremens that night, but here he was drifting, with a singular fatality, toward the river and the Morgue. Now, that his day's work of begging was done, all his jackal watchfulness had disappeared, and an inner vision seemed to look forth from his bleared eyes as their gaze strained straight and dull toward the black river. It may have been a mere fancy, but the expression in his eyes reminded me strongly of similar things that I had seen on the slabs in the Morgue.
We crossed the Rue du Haut-Pavé again to the river wall, and arrived at the bridge leading back of Notre-Dame and past the Morgue. On the farther end of the bridge, propped against the parapet, was a small stand, upon a corner of which a dim lamp was burning. In front were a number of milk-cans, and on a small counter were a row of thick white bowls and a basket of croissants. Inside, upon a small stove, red with heat, were two kettles from which issued clouds of steam bearing an odor of boiling milk. A stout woman, her face so well wrapped in a shawl that only the end of her red nose was visible, greeted us,—"Bon jour, messieurs. En voulez-vous du bon lait bien chaud?"
She poured out four bowls of steaming milk, and gave us each a roll. For this luxury we paid three sous each; and a feast it was, for the shivering poet, at least, for he licked the hot bowl clean and ate the very crumbs of his croissant.
As we were bound for widely separated quarters, our Bohemian friends bade us an affectionate good-night, and were soon swallowed up in the gloom. We turned towards home and the Boul' Mich'. All the cafés were closed and dark, but the boulevard was alive with canal-boatmen, street- sweepers, and rumbling vegetable- and milk-carts. The streets were being washed clean of all evidences of the previous day's life and turmoil, and the great city was creeping forth from its lair to begin another.