“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 think Monsieur Godefroid hired his rooms to have you hold your meetings in them?”

“Excuse me, madame,” said the gardener, “but there was no room on the landing.”

“I didn’t say that for you, Monsieur Cartier,” said the widow.

“Remain where you are!” cried Godefroid, addressing the gardener; “and you, my dear neighbor,” he added, looking at Monsieur Bernard, who seemed insensible to the cruel insult, “if it is convenient to you to have an explanation with your gardener in my room, come in.”

The old man, half stupefied with his troubles, cast a look of gratitude on Godefroid.

“As for you, my dear Madame Vauthier,” continued Godefroid, “don’t be so rough with monsieur, who is in the first place an old man, and one to whom you owe the obligation of my lodging here.”

“Oh, pooh!” said the widow.

“Besides, if poor people do not help each other, who will help them?  Leave us, Madame Vauthier; I’ll blow the fire myself.  Have the rest of my wood put in your cellar; I am sure you will take good care of it.”