are certainly afflicted with an unquenchable
thirst," growled Chupin. "I wonder if this is their everyday life?"

He, too, was thirsty after his hastily eaten dinner; and necessity
prevailing over economy, he seated himself at a table outside the cafe,
and called for a glass of beer, in which he moistened his parched lips
with a sigh of intense satisfaction. He sipped the beverage slowly, in
order to make it last the longer, but this did not prevent his glass
from becoming dry long before M. Wilkie and his friends were ready to
leave. "It seems to me we are going to stay here all night," he thought,
angrily.

His ill-humor was not strange under the circumstances, for it was one
o'clock in the morning; and after carrying all the tables and chairs
round about, inside, a waiter came to ask Chupin to go away. All the
other cafes were closing too, and the fastening of bolts or the clanking
of shutter chains could be heard on every side. On the pavement stood
groups of waiters in their shirt-sleeves, stretching and yawning,
and inhaling the fresh night air with delight. The boulevard was fast
becoming deserted--the men were going off in little groups, and female
forms could be seen gliding along in the dark shadow cast by the houses.
The police were watching everywhere, with a word of menace ever ready
on their lips; and soon the only means of egress from the cafes were
the narrow, low doorways cut in the shutters through which the last
customers--the insatiable, who are always ordering one thimbleful more
to finish--passed out.

It was through a portal of this sort that M. Wilkie and his companions
at last emerged, and on perceiving them, Chupin gave a grunt of
satisfaction. "At last," he thought, "I can follow the man to his door,
take his number, and go home."

But his joy was short-lived, for M. Wilkie proposed that the whole party
should go and take supper. M. de Coralth demurred to the idea, but the
others over-ruled his objections, and dragged him away with them.

XIX.

"Ah! this is a bad job!" growled Chupin. "Go, go, and never stop!"

What exasperated him even more than his want of sleep was the thought
that his good mother must be waiting for him at home in an agony of
anxiety; for since his reformation he had become remarkably regular in
his habits. What should he do? "Go home," said Reason; "it will be easy
enough to find this Wilkie again. There can be little doubt that he
lives at No. 48, in the