Every evening I find Monsieur Crillon at the door of his shop at the end of the court, where all day long he is fiercely bent upon trivial jobs, and he rises before me like a post.  At sight of me the kindly giant nods his big, shaven face, and the square cap on top, his huge nose and vast ears.  He taps the leather apron that is hard as a plank.  He sweeps me along to the side of the street, sets my back against the porch and says to me, in a low voice, but with heated conviction, “That Petrarque chap, he’s really a bad lot.”

He takes off his cap, and while the crescendo nodding of his bristly head seems to brush the night, he adds:  “I’ve mended him his purse.  It had become percolated.  I’ve put him a patch on that cost me thirty centimes, and I’ve resewn the edge with braid, and all the lot.  They’re expensive, them jobs.  Well, when I open my mouth to talk about that matter of his sewing-machine that I’m interested in and that he can’t use himself, he becomes congealed.”

He recounts to me the mad claims of Trompson in the matter of his new soles, and the conduct of Monsieur Becret, who, though old enough to know better, had taken advantage of his good faith by paying for the repair of his spout with a knife “that would cut anything it sees.”  He goes on to detail for my benefit all the important matters in his life.  Then he says, “I’m not rich, I’m not, but I’m consentious.  If I’m a botcher, it’s ’cos my father and my grandfather were botchers before me.  There’s some that’s for making a big stir in the world, there are.  I don’t hold with that idea.  What I does, I does.”

Suddenly a sonorous tramp persists and repeats itself in the roadway, and a shape of uncertain equilibrium emerges and advances towards us by fits and starts; a shape that clings to itself and is impelled by a force stronger than itself.  It is Brisbille, the blacksmith, drunk, as usual.

Espying us, Brisbille utters exclamations.  When he has reached us he hesitates, and then, smitten by a sudden idea, he comes to a standstill, his boots clanking on the stones, as if he were a cart.  He measures the height of the curb with his eye, but clenches his fists, swallows what he wanted to say, and goes off reeling, with an odor of hatred and wine, and his face slashed with red patches.

“That anarchist!” said Crillon, in disgust; “loathsome notions, now, aren’t they?  Ah! who’ll rid us of him and his alcoholytes?” he adds, as he offers me his hand.  “Good-night.  I’m always saying to the Town Council, ’You must give ’em clink,’ I says, ’that gang of Bolshevists, for the slightest infractionment of the laws against drunkenness.’  Yes, indeed!  There’s that Jean Latrouille in the Town Council, eh?  They talk about keeping order, but as soon as it’s a question of a-doing of it, they seem like a cold draught.”