seated himself on the
bed, saying as he did so: "This is scarcely on so grand a scale as your
establishment, m'sieur; but I am going to ask the landlord to gild the
window of my snuff-box."

M. Fortunat was positively touched. He held out his hand to his clerk
and exclaimed: "You're a worthy fellow, Chupin."

"Nonsense, m'sieur, one does what one can; but, zounds! how hard it is
to make money honestly! If my good mother could only see, she would
help me famously, for there is no one like her for work! But you see one
can't become a millionaire by knitting!"

"Doesn't your father live with you?"

Chupin's eyes gleamed angrily. "Ah! don't speak of that man to me,
m'sieur!" he exclaimed, "or I shall hurt somebody." And then, as if he
felt it necessary to explain and excuse his vindictive exclamation, he
added: "My father, Polyte Chupin, is a good-for-nothing scamp. And yet
he's had his opportunities. First, he was fortunate enough to find a
wife like my mother, who is honesty itself--so much so that she was
called Toinon the Virtuous when she was young. She idolized him, and
nearly killed herself by working to earn money for him. And yet he
abused her so much, and made her weep so much, that she has become
blind. But that's not all. One morning there came to him--I don't know
whence or how--enough money for him to have lived like a gentleman. I
believe it was a munificent reward for some service he had rendered a
great nobleman at the time when my grandmother, who is now dead, kept a
dramshop called the Poivriere. Any other man would have treasured that
money, but not he. What he did was to carouse day and night, and all the
while my poor mother was working her fingers to the bone to earn food
for me. She never saw a penny of all his money; and, indeed, once when
she asked him to pay the rent, he beat her so cruelly that she was laid
up in bed for a week. However, monsieur, you can very readily understand
that when a man leads that kind of life, he speedily comes to the end of
his banking account. So my father was soon without a penny in his purse,
and then he was obliged to work in order to get something to eat, and
this didn't suit him at all. But when he didn't know where to find a
crust he remembered us; he sought us out, and found us. Once I lent him
a hundred sous; the next day he came for forty more, and the next for
three francs; then for five francs again. And so it was every day: 'Give
me this, or give me tha