coats, our second boots, our second waistcoats--everything of which we
had a duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and cold sausages; we
looked where we walked; we had set to work in earnest. We owed two
months' rent, and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty
or eighty items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made
no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the
bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the
lowest step into the street. On the day when we first found ourselves
bereft of tobacco for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we
had been eating bread without any kind of butter.

Great was our distress.

"No tobacco!" said the Doctor.

"No cloak!" said the Keeper of the Seals.

"Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you
would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night
at Very's--sometimes even at the _Rocher de Cancale_.--Dry bread for
you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep
under the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it--"

"Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more tobacco!" said
Juste.

"It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and our
sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the wear and
tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will solve an
elegant chemical problem by transmuting linen into silver."