constable.

Gavard's manners with Florent were altogether those of a man tasting
some forbidden pleasure. He contemplated him with blinking eyes, lowered
his voice even when making the most trifling remark, and grasped his
hand with all sorts of masonic flummery. He had at last lighted upon
something in the way of an adventure; he had a friend who was really
compromised, and could, without falsehood speak of the dangers he
incurred. He undoubtedly experienced a secret alarm at the sight of
this man who had returned from transportation, and whose fleshlessness
testified to the long sufferings he had endured; however, this touch of
alarm was delightful, for it increased his notion of his own importance,
and convinced him that he was really doing something wonderful in
treating a dangerous character as a friend. Florent became a sort of
sacred being in his eyes: he swore by him alone, and had recourse to his
name whenever arguments failed him and he wanted to crush the Government
once and for all.

Gavard had lost his wife in the Rue Saint Jacques some months after the
Coup d'Etat; however, he had kept on his roasting shop till 1856. At
that time it was reported that he had made large sums of money by going
into partnership with a neighbouring grocer who had obtained a contract
for supplying dried vegetables to the Crimean expeditionary corps. The
truth was, however, that, having sold his shop, he lived on his income
for a year without doing anything. He himself did not care to talk
about the real origin of his fortune, for to have revealed it would have
prevented him from plainly expressing his opinion of the Crimean War,
which he referred to as a mere adventurous expedition, "undertaken
simply to consolidate the throne and to fill certain persons' pockets."
At the end of a year he had grown utterly weary of life in his bachelor
quarters. As he was in the habit of visiting the Quenu-Gradelles almost
daily, he determined to take up his residence nearer to them, and came
to live in the Rue de la Cossonnerie. The neighbouring markets, with
their noisy uproar and endless chatter, quite fascinated him; and he
decided to hire a stall in the poultry pavilion, just for the purpose
of amusing himself and occupying his idle hours with all the gossip.
Thenceforth he lived amidst ceaseless tittle-tattle, acquainted with
every little scandal in the neighbourhood, his head buzzing with
the incessant yelping around him. He blissfully t