“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked sharply.

“Nothing...”

“What are you going to do with that?”

Cranajour seemed to reflect, dimly.

“Haven’t I told you,” grumbled Mother Toulouche,

“to go and stick it up outside? ... Don’t say you’ve gone and forgotten already!”

“No, no!” protested Cranajour, hastening to obey orders. “What a specimen!” thought Mother Toulouche, whilst counting over the seventeen francs.

Cranajour was a remarkably queer fish beyond question. How had he come into connection with Mother Toulouche and her intimates? That remained a mystery. One fine day this seedy specimen of humanity was found among the “comrades” exchanging vague remarks with one and another. He stuck to them in all their shifting from this place to that: no one had been able to get out of him what his name was, nor where he came from, for he was afflicted with a memory like a sieve – he could not remember things for moe than two hours. A feeble-minded, poor sort of fellow, with not an ounce of wickedness in him, always ready to do a good turn for anyone: to judge by his looks he might have been any age between forty and seventy – for there is nothing like deprivation and misery to alter the looks of a man! Faced by this odd, retarded creature, they had christened him “Crane à jour” – and the nickname had stuck to the anonymous vagrant. Besides, wasn’t Cranajour the most compliant of fellows, the easiest of collaborators, always content with what was given him, always willing to do his best?

As to Mother Toulouche; she kept a little shop on the quay of the Clock. The sign over her little store read:

“For the Curiosity Lover.”

That alluring title was not justified by anything to be found inside this store, which was nothing but a common junk shop: it was a receptacle for a hideous collection of lumber, for old broken furniture, for garments past decent wear, for indescribable odds and ends, where the wreckage of human misery lay huddled cheek by jowl with the beggarly off-scourings of Parisian destitution.

Behind the store, whose little front faced the edge of the quay and looked over the Seine, was a sordid backshop: here the mattress of Mother Toulouche, a kitchen stove out of order, and the overflow of the goods which were crowded out of the store, were jumbled up in ill -smelling disorder.

This backshop connected to the rue de Harlay by a narrow dark passage; thus the lair of old Mother Toulouche had two outlets, and nor were they superfluous; in fact they were indispensable for one such as she – ever on the alert to escape the inquisitive attentions of the police, ever receiving visitors of doubtful morals and thoroughly bad reputation.