two rows of beds occupied by these
youngsters whom I must look after. I can never be alone, never! If I go
out I find the streets full of people, and, when I am tired of walking, I
go into some cafe crowded with smokers and billiard players. I tell you
what, it is the life of a galley slave."

I said:

"Why did you not take up some other line, Monsieur Piquedent?"

He exclaimed:

"What, my little friend? I am not a shoemaker, or a joiner, or a hatter,
or a baker, or a hairdresser. I only know Latin, and I have no diploma
which would enable me to sell my knowledge at a high price. If I were a
doctor I would sell for a hundred francs what I now sell for a hundred
sous; and I would supply it probably of an inferior quality, for my title
would be enough to sustain my reputation."

Sometimes he would say to me:

"I have no rest in life except in the hours spent with you. Don't be
afraid! you'll lose nothing by that. I'll make it up to you in the
class-room by making you speak twice as much Latin as the others."

One day, I grew bolder, and offered him a cigarette. He stared at me in
astonishment at first, then he gave a glance toward the door.

"If any one were to come in, my dear boy?"

"Well, let us smoke at the window," said I.

And we went and leaned our elbows on the windowsill looking on the
street, holding concealed in our hands the little rolls of tobacco. Just
opposite to us was a laundry. Four women in loose white waists were
passing hot, heavy irons over the linen spread out before them, from
which a warm steam arose.

Suddenly, another, a fifth, carrying on her arm a large basket which made
her stoop, came out to take the customers their shirts, their
handkerchiefs, and their sheets. She stopped on the threshold as if she
were already fatigued; then, she raised her eyes, smiled as she saw us
smoking, flung at us, with her left hand, which was free, the sly kiss
characteristic of a free-and-easy working-woman, and went away at a slow
place, dragging her feet as she went.

She was a woman of about twenty, small, rather thin, pale, rather pretty,
with a roguish air and laughing eyes beneath her ill-combed fair hair.

Pere Piquedent, affected, began murmuring:

"What an occupation for a woman! Really a trade only fit for a horse."

And he spoke with emotion about the misery of the people. He had a heart
which swelled with lofty democratic sentiment, and he referred to the
fatiguing pursuits of the