"Presently," said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand,
and gazing toward the rue d'Enghien.

At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man
accompanied by a true "gamin," who was followed by a porter dragging a
hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him
confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his
own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart,
which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of
singular shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the
youngest of the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed
away with such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his
mother, now standing on the other side of the street, saw none of the
paraphernalia which might have revealed to him the profession of his
new travelling companion.

The gamin, who must have been sixteen years of age, wore a gray blouse
buckled round his waist by a polished leather belt. His cap, jauntily
perched on the side of his head, seemed the sign of a merry nature,
and so did the picturesque disorder of the curly brown hair which fell
upon his shoulders. A black-silk cravat drew a line round his very
white neck, and added to the vivacity of his bright gray eyes. The
animation of his brown and rosy face, the moulding of his rather large
lips, the ears detached from his head, his slightly turned-up nose,
--in fact, all the details of his face proclaimed the lively spirit of
a Figaro, and the careless gayety of youth, while the vivacity of his
gesture and his mocking eye revealed an intellect already developed by
the practice of a profession adopted very early in life. As he had
already some claims to personal value, this child, made man by Art or
by vocation, seemed indifferent to the question of costume; for he