that were losing their tow. It was there that the "politicians" used to
dine together, adding to the everlasting "soup and beef," fruit, cheese,
and pints of wine which Jean Francois went out and got by the can--a
tumultuous repast interrupted by violent disputes, and where, during the
dessert, the "Carmagnole" and "Ca Ira" were sung in full chorus. They
assumed, however, an air of great dignity on those days when a newcomer
was brought in among them, at first entertaining him gravely as a
citizen, but on the morrow using him with affectionate familiarity, and
calling him by his nickname. Great words were used there: Corporation,
Responsibility, and phrases quite unintelligible to Jean Francois--such
as this, for example, which he once heard imperiously put forth by a
frightful little hunchback who blotted some writing-paper every night:

"It is done. This is the composition of the Cabinet: Raymond, the Bureau
of Public Instruction; Martial, the Interior; and for Foreign Affairs,
myself."

His time done, he wandered again around Paris, watched afar by the
police, after the fashion of cockchafers, made by cruel children to fly
at the end of a string. He became one of those fugitive and timid beings
whom the law, with a sort of coquetry, arrests and releases by
turn--something like those platonic fishers who, in order that they may
not exhaust their fish-pond, throw immediately back in the water the
fish which has just come out of the net. Without a suspicion on his part
that so much honor had been done to so sorry a subject, he had a special
bundle of memoranda in the mysterious portfolios of the Rue de
Jerusalem. His name was written in round hand on the gray paper of the
cover, and the notes and reports, carefully classified, gave him his
successive appellations: "Name, Leturc;" "the prisoner Leturc," and, at
last, "the criminal Leturc."

He was two years out of prison, dining where he could, sleeping in night
lodging-houses and sometimes in lime-kilns, and taking part with his
fellows in interminable games of pitch-penny on the boulevards near the
barriers: He wore a greasy cap on the back of his head, carpet slippers,
and a short white blouse. When he had five sous he had his hair curled.
He danced at Constant's at Montparnasse; bought for two sous to sell for
four at the door of Bobino, the jack of hearts or the ace of clubs
serving as a countermark; sometimes opened the door of a carriage; led
horses to the horse