V
THE RUNNERS
Laurent even began to make friends with the riverpirates, fresh water sharks, the blackguards or runners whom honest Tilbak had held at a distance, models whom the painter Marbol repudiated as too tainted.
A peculiarly local breed, the majority of whom first saw the light of day, or whatever took its place, in little waterside alleys, at the back of some fish-factor's shop, or beneath the roof of some cosmopolitan herberge. Blind alleys and culs-de-sac in which these brats swarmed and multiplied to such an extent that one would have thought the dealers in eels and mussels as prolific as their merchandise. Marsh fever and contagious diseases swept away whole litters of these urchins, the heavy trucks of the Nations ran over at least a couple of them each week; but the next day they again swarmed in crowds as compact as those of the day before. Legitimate unions between fishermen and fishwives did not always suffice to foul the floors of these hovels with this human seaweed. Loves as fleeting and as capricious as those of plants presided over the propagation of the species. The sons of a blonde servant like the blonde Germanic inherited their lemon-colored complexions and black eyelashes from their father, an Italian helmsman stranded overnight in the
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