"It's very odd, but have you ever noticed that although a man can always
find somebody to treat him to something to drink, he can never find a
soul who will stand him anything to eat?"

The dawn was now rising. The houses on the Boulevard de Sebastopol at
the end of the Rue de la Cossonnerie were still black; but above the
sharp line of their slate roofs a patch of pale blue sky, circumscribed
by the arch-pieces of the covered way, showed like a gleaming half-moon.
Claude, who had been bending over some grated openings on a level with
the ground, through which a glimpse could be obtained of deep cellars
where gas lights glimmered, now glanced up into the air between the
lofty pillars, as though scanning the dark roofs which fringed the clear
sky. Then he halted again, with his eyes fixed on one of the light iron
ladders which connect the superposed market roofs and give access from
one to the other. Florent asked him what he was seeking there.

"I'm looking for that scamp of a Marjolin," replied the artist. "He's
sure to be in some guttering up there, unless, indeed, he's been
spending the night in the poultry cellars. I want him to give me a
sitting."

Then he went on to relate how a market saleswoman had found his friend
Marjolin one morning in a pile of cabbages, and how Marjolin had grown
up in all liberty on the surrounding footways. When an attempt had been
made to send him to school he had fallen ill, and it had been necessary
to bring him back to the markets. He knew every nook and corner of them,
and loved them with a filial affection, leading the agile life of a
squirrel in that forest of ironwork. He and Cadine, the hussy whom
Mother Chantemesse had picked up one night in the old Market of the
Innocents, made a pretty couple--he, a splendid foolish fellow, as