of doing what he offered, and endeavored to stun him with their ridiculous answers.
"Say, Jan Slim, have you finished humbugging your set? Tell us your tailor's address? Hey, rare bird, since you are in the mood to preach, why not recite the ten commandments for us? Surely, we'll go with you, little father, and right off, but can you take us to the Hotel Saint-Antoine or to Casti's for dinner? We don't want to hurt your feelings, but we think you've broken out from the Rue des Beguines or that you are a pilgrim to Merxplas! Is it with stolen money that you are going to cram our bellies?"
Far from taking offence at these jokes, Laurent profoundly regretted that he could no longer find a single hundred franc note to distribute among them, and pay their ransom to fate. He was himself at the end of his resources, and should he not be able to hire out his enfeebled arms on the morrow, he would in point of fact have to begin a pilgrimage to Merxplas, to the hospitable prison for tramps and vagrants, where he would meet Karl the Blacksmith and so many other worthy pariahs.
Warned of an ever more imminent trouble, Laurent persisted in trying to take the young folks far from this neighborhood; he begged them almost with his tears to hire themselves out elsewhere as hodmen, navvies, coffee-sorters, herring-peddlers, or at least to take a holiday today, only one afternoon, to play the truant from the factory for the rest of the day.
But thinking that this mystification was becoming a bore, their chief scamp with large eyes the color of a ripe chestnut, with a teasing expression, with a willful, dimpled chin, a difficult rogue to handle, the
