a good Frenchman, you should have a wholesome hatred of the
stranger."

"All that will come to your share may be his feet."

"Emblem of the velocity with which you run on the office errands."

"I thought I might at least have a right to the carcass to pick!"
muttered Hop-the-Gutter.

"Perchance, as an excessive favour, but not as a right; just as with the
Charter of 1814, which was but another carcass of liberty!" said the
Mirabeau of the office.

"Talking of carcasses," observed one youth, with brutal insensibility,
"may heaven receive the soul of Madame Seraphin! For since she was
drowned in her water-party of pleasure, we are no longer condemned to
eternal 'cag-mag.'"

"And, for a whole week, the governor, instead of giving us breakfast--"

"Allows us each two francs a day."

"It was that which made me say, 'Heaven receive the soul of Mother
Seraphin!'"

"Talking of Madame Seraphin, who has seen the servant who has come in
her place?"

"The Alsatian girl whom the portress of the house in which poor Louise
lived brought one evening, as the porter told us?"

"Yes."

"_Parbleu!_ It is quite impossible to get a glimpse of her; for the
governor is more resolute than ever in preventing us from entering into
the pavilion in the courtyard."

"And besides, as it is the porter who now cleans out the office, how can
one see this damsel?"

"Well, I've seen her."

"You?"

"When I say I've seen her, I've seen her cap; such a rum cap!"

"Oh, pooh! What sort?"

"It was cherry-coloured velvet, I think; a kind of skull-cap like the
'buy-a-broom' girls wear."

"Like the Alsaciennes? Why, that's simple enough, as she is an
Alsacienne!"

"I was passing across the yard the day before yesterday, and she was
leaning with her back against one of the windows of the ground floor."

"What! The yard?"

"No, donkey, no,--the servant! The panes of the lower part are so dirty
that I could not see much of the Alsacienne; but those in the middle of
the window were not so grubby, and I saw her cherry-coloured cap and a
profusion of curling hair as black as jet, for she had her head dressed
_a la Titus_."

"I'm sure the governor has not seen even as much as that through his
spectacles; for he is one who, as they say, if he were left alone with
one woman on the earth, then the world would end."

"That is not astonishing. 'He laughs best who laughs last!' And the more
so, as 'Punctuality is the politeness of monarchs!'"