“The devil he was!” said Dumoulin, somewhat out of countenance, though in general not over-scrupulous in the choice of his bottle-companions:  but, after the first surprise, he resumed, with the most charming amenity:  “There are some rag-pickers very high by scent—­I mean descent!”

“To be sure! you may think to laugh at me,” said Jacques, “but you are right in this respect, for my father was a man of very great merit.  He spoke Greek and Latin like a scholar, and often told me that he had not his equal in mathematics; besides, he had travelled a good deal.”

“Well, then,” resumed Dumoulin, whom surprise had partly sobered, “you may belong to the family of the Counts of Rennepont, after all.”

“In which case,” said Rose-Pompon, laughing, “your father was not a gutter-snipe by trade, but only for the honor of the thing.”

“No, no—­worse luck! it was to earn his living,” replied Jacques; “but, in his youth, he had been well off.  By what appeared, or rather by what did not appear, he had applied to some rich relation, and the rich relation had said to him:  ‘Much obliged! try the work’us.’  Then he wished to make use of his Greek, and Latin, and mathematics.  Impossible to do anything—­Paris, it seems, being choke-full of learned men—­so my father had to look for his bread at the end of a hooked stick, and there, too, he must have found it, for I ate of it during two years, when I came to live with him after the death of an aunt, with whom I had been staying in the country.”

“Your respectable father must have been a sort of philosopher,” said Dumoulin; “but, unless he found an inheritance in a dustbin, I don’t see how you came into your property.”

“Wait for the end of the song.  At twelve years of age I was an apprentice at the factory of M. Tripeaud; two years afterwards, my father died of an accident, leaving me the furniture of our garret—­a mattress, a chair, and a table—­and, moreover, in an old Eau de Cologne box, some papers (written, it seems, in English), and a bronze medal, worth about ten sous, chain and all.  He had never spoken to me of these papers, so, not knowing if they were good for anything, I left them at the bottom of an old trunk, instead of burning them—­which was well for me, since it is upon these papers that I have had money advanced.”

“What a godsend!” said Dumoulin.  “But somebody must have known that you had them?”

“Yes; one of those people that are always looking out for old debts came to Cephyse, who told me all about it; and, after he had read the papers, he said that the affair was doubtful, but that he would lend me ten thousand francs on it, if I liked.  Ten thousand francs was a large sum, so I snapped him up!”

“But you must have supposed that these old papers were of great value.”

“Faith, no! since my father, who ought to have known their value, had never realized on them—­and then, you see, ten thousand francs in good, bright coin, falling as it were from the clouds, are not to be sneezed at—­so I took them—­only the man made me do a bit of stiff as guarantee, or something of that kind.”