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Updated: May 2, 2025
Monsieur Hure, you take 'By Jingo' for a law term, and you say you come from Mortagne!" exclaimed Simonnin. "Scratch it cleanly out," said the head clerk. "If the judge, whose business it is to tax the bill, were to see such things, he would say you were laughing at the whole boiling. You would hear of it from the chief! Come, no more of this nonsense, Monsieur Hure!
"Is Curtius' a play?" said Godeschal. "No," said the head clerk, "it is a collection of figures but it is a spectacle." "I bet you a hundred francs to a sou," Godeschal resumed, "that Curtius' Waxworks forms such a show as might be called a play or theatre. It contains a thing to be seen at various prices, according to the place you choose to occupy." "And so on, and so forth!" said Simonnin.
"Here she is," answered Simonnin. "So you are not deaf, you young rogue!" said Chabert, taking the gutter-jumper by the ear and twisting it, to the delight of the other clerks, who began to laugh, looking at the Colonel with the curious attention due to so singular a personage. Comte Chabert was in Derville's private room at the moment when his wife came in by the door of the office.
"But on that principle you would pay your bet by taking us to see the water run under the Pont Neuf!" cried Simonnin, interrupting him. "To be seen for money," Godeschal added. "But a great many things are to be seen for money that are not plays. The definition is defective," said Desroches. "But do listen to me!" "You are talking nonsense, my dear boy," said Boucard.
The boy is almost always ruthless, unbroken, unmanageable, a ribald rhymester, impudent, greedy, and idle. And yet, almost all these clerklings have an old mother lodging on some fifth floor with whom they share their pittance of thirty or forty francs a month. "If he is a man, why do you call him old Box-coat?" asked Simonnin, with the air of a schoolboy who has caught out his master.
The lawyer's messenger is commonly, as was Simonnin, a lad of thirteen or fourteen, who, in every office, is under the special jurisdiction of the managing clerk, whose errands and billets-doux keep him employed on his way to carry writs to the bailiffs and petitions to the Courts. He is akin to the street boy in his habits, and to the pettifogger by fate.
"What do you think of that for a cracked pot?" said Simonnin, without waiting till the old man had shut the door. "He looks as if he had been buried and dug up again," said a clerk. "He is some colonel who wants his arrears of pay," said the head clerk. "No, he is a retired concierge," said Godeschal. "I bet you he is a nobleman," cried Boucard.
The pellet, well aimed, rebounded almost as high as the window, after hitting the hat of a stranger who was crossing the courtyard of a house in the Rue Vivienne, where dwelt Maitre Derville, attorney-at-law. "Come, Simonnin, don't play tricks on people, or I will turn you out of doors.
"No," Boucard insisted, in the midst of laughter, "I maintain that he was a brewer in 1789, and a colonel in the time of the Republic." "I bet theatre tickets round that he never was a soldier," said Godeschal. "Done with you," answered Boucard. "Monsieur! Monsieur!" shouted the little messenger, opening the window. "What are you at now, Simonnin?" asked Boucard.
If the clients were rejuvenescent, the office was unaltered, and presented the same picture as that described at the beginning of this story. Simonnin was eating his breakfast, his shoulder leaning against the window, which was then open, and he was staring up at the blue sky in the opening of the courtyard enclosed by four gloomy houses.
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