one another, drinking, shouting, chattering, singing.

A clean-shaven man, whose suspicious little eyes were perpetually
blinking, turned to a young woman.

"Look here, Ernestine, my beauty, are you certain the Beadle understood
that we should be waiting for him here?"

Big Ernestine, who was crouching on the ground and warming her hands at
a wood fire, throwing up clouds of smoke, shrugged her shoulders.

"Stop it, do! You say things over and over again, like a clock,
Nibet!... Since I've told you _yes_--_yes_ it is--there now, and be
hanged to you!... You don't by chance fancy the Beadle has been made a
mouthful of, do you?"

Roars of laughter greeted this. Nibet was not one of the inner circle;
he was not much of a favourite in the band of Numbers. It is true that
they reckoned him a comrade, useful, faithful, that they felt safe with
him; but they bore him a grudge because of his regular employment,
because of his position, because he was an official.... And, first and
last, his warder's uniform impressed the jail birds unpleasantly.

But Nibet was not the man to allow himself to be intimidated.

"All the same," said he, "I ask where the three of them have got to?...
If they know the mushroom bed, they should have been back long ago!" He
shouted to an old woman.

"Eh, Toulouche, tell us the time!"

But Mother Toulouche shook her head.

"I haven't a watch!"

There was a murmur of protestation. The seven or eight hooligans
assembled there awaiting the return of the Beard and the Beadle, sent
with Emilet to kidnap Jules, could not believe that. Mother Toulouche
had told the truth.

The Sailor caught the old woman by the shoulders and shook her, and went
on shaking her.

"Liar! Aren't you ashamed to be in a funk with us?... Ever since this
blessed Mother Toulouche has sold winkles and many other things, ever
since she began to make a little purse for herself, which must be a big
purse by now, a purse everyone here has sweated to fill to the brim, she
has always distrusted us!... You say you haven't a watch! I tell you,
you've got dozens of 'em!..."

Big Ernestine interrupted.

"It's a half-hour over the hour agreed...."

A shudder ran through the assembly: Nibet, finger on lip, made a sign
that they were to listen.

Then, in the mushroom bed, no longer in use, which the band of Numbers
had recently adopted as their meeting place, a profound silence fell....

"There they are!" said Nibet.

Big E