human
he exclaimed suddenly, halting before his friend.
gpt
It ain't any use for me to try to like this stuff--it's nasty! Dry bread and onion will never be as good as roast veal. This is a beastly sort of breakfast for a fellow to eat; but when you're breaking in two with hunger, you must stuff your blackguard of a belly with something or other! If I only had a drop of wine to wash it down with! but there's not enough in my pocket to pay for the smallest kind of a glass. And that wine shop keeper yonder won't trust me any more, on the pretext that I owe him money now! What an old fool! Parbleu! if I didn't owe him anything, he couldn't ever have trusted me. People ain't reasonable at all. I say, Sans-Cravate, business has been pretty bad lately. We don't earn hardly anything.
human
That ain't surprising; when we have a few sous, you take me right off to spend 'em! then people come and don't find us in our places, so they hire somebody else; that's the way I've lost almost all my customers. Oh! I know well enough that I am doing wrong; I shall never save up money by hanging round wine shops and seeing nobody but loafers. What can they think of me at home? I am ashamed to write to my father. And my sister, little Liline, that I meant to save money for, to give her a marriage portion! Damnation! I'm an infernal coward! And to think that I haven't got the strength of mind to begin to work hard again as I used to! Ah! when a man has grief in his heart, he's good for nothing.
gpt
Ta! ta! ta! there you go again! You're always blaming yourself, and for what? Sans-Cravate, you're no man! is it our fault if we don't get any errands to do? No. But just because we go and take a drink once in a while outside the barrier, you say we're losing our customers. That's damned nonsense! Look you: I'll give you a comparison, to prove that customers come all the same when we ain't here. There's Paul, that gawk who used to stand over yonder, and hasn't showed up for two weeks because you hit him so hard that he hurt himself a little when he fell,--well, in the fortnight he's been away haven't they sent here for him twenty times, to go to Monsieur Vermoncey, who wanted him? And five days ago, when you were off on an errand, didn't monsieur himself come and ask for him? There's a man that looks as if he was well fixed; he's the father of your old customer, Monsieur Albert. Ah! there was a young fellow who paid handsomely; how the money slipped through his fingers, and what a pity he's left Paris! If he hadn't, what lots of cart-wheels we'd have to spin!
human
But what did Monsieur Vermoncey say to you?
gpt
But if he really has business with Paul--why not send him to him?
human
Not much! Catch me sending customers to others, when we're short of 'em ourselves! that would be too soft. And, besides, did he ever tell us his address, the fox? do we know where he lives?
gpt
No; but since that unfortunate fall, which I was responsible for, you know that he has been living in Bastringuette's room and that she is taking care of him; you must know it--as it was you who told me.
human
Yes, to be sure he's with her. Instead of having him taken to the hospital, where he'd have been taken care of for nothing, she took him to her own room; she's his nurse, his _sœur de pot_. Gad! a woman must love a man, to spend all her money in drugs and medicines for him! But it seems she does love him--with fire and blood!
gpt
How about his wound? isn't it getting better? Won't he soon be well?
human
Oh! I don't know! that is to say, yes--the wound on the head's better; it's all healed; but it seems that the arm will take longer; he broke something or other when he fell, and that can't be put right in a minute.
gpt
What surprises me, said Sans-Cravate, after a pause,
human
No; I don't propose to get trusted any more. When we haven't got any money, we must drink water.
gpt
Why, that's nonsense! on the contrary, when you haven't got any money, you get tight to forget your troubles. Come on; I'll treat, and owe you the money.
human
No, I won't go!