rooms, in which were many pots of flowers, and returned to speak to
the gardener, carefully closing the door behind him. Godefroid's door
was open, for Nepomucene had begun his trips, and was stacking the
wood in the front room. The gardener was silent in presence of Monsieur
Bernard, whose tall figure, robed in a violet silk dressing-gown,
buttoned to the throat, gave him an imposing air.

"You might ask for what is owing to you without such noise," said
Monsieur Bernard.

"Be fair, my dear monsieur," said the gardener. "You agreed to pay
me every week, and it now three months, ten weeks, since I have had a
penny; you owe me a hundred and twenty francs. We let out our plants to
rich people who pay us when we ask for the money; but this is the fifth
time I have come to you for it. I have my rent to pay and the wages of
my men; I am not a bit richer than you. My wife, who supplied you with
eggs and milk, will not come here any more; you owe her thirty francs.
She does not like to dun you, for she is kind-hearted, that she is! If I
listened to her, I couldn't do business at all. And so I, who am not so
soft--you understand?"

Just then Auguste came out dressed in a shabby little green coat with
cloth trousers of the same color, a black cravat, and worn-out boots.
These clothes, though carefully brushed, showed the lowest degree of
poverty; they were all too short and too narrow, so that the lad seemed
likely to crack them at every motion. The seams were white, the edges
curled, the buttonholes torn in spite of many mendings; the whole
presenting to the most unobservant eyes the heart-breaking stigmas of
honest penury. This livery contrasted sadly with the youth of the lad,
who now disappeared munching a crust of stale bread with his strong and
handsome teeth. He breakfasted thus on his way to the rue Saint-Jacques,
carrying his books and papers under his arm, and wearing a little cap
much too small for his head, from which stuck out a mass of magnificent
black hair.

In passing before his grandfather the lad had given him rapidly a
look of deep distress; for he knew him to be in an almost hopeless
difficulty, the consequences of which might be terrible. To leave
room for the boy to pass, the gardener had stepped back to the sill
of Godefroid's door, and as at that moment Nepomucene arrived with a
quantity of wood, the creditor was forced to retreat into the room.

"Monsieur Bernard!" cried the widow Vauthier, "do you