“Come along, Cranajour, and just tell us where you dined this evening!”

The simpleton seemed to make a prodigious effort of memory, seized his head between his hands, closed his eyes, and racked his brains: after quite a long silence, he declared emphatically and with a distressed air:

“Faith, I can’t tell you now!”

Nibet, who had closely watched this performance, nodded.“It’s quite all right,” he said.

The cellars below Mother Toulouche’s store were extensive, dark, and ill-smelling. The walls glistened with exuding damp, and the ground was a sticky mass of foul mud, of all sorts of refuse, of putrefying waste matter.

Nibet, followed by his companion, made his way down to them: it was no easy descent, for they had to climb over cases of all kinds, and over bales and bundles that moved and rolled about. They passed into a smaller cellar, around which were ranged long boxes of tin with rusty covers. Cranajour, who had been given the lantern to carry, was attracted to these boxes: he lifted the cover of one of them and drew back wonderstruck – for the box was full of shining gold pieces! Nibet, with a jab and thrust in the back, interrupted Cranajour’s contemplation of this fortune:

“Nothing to faint over!” he growled. “You’re not such a simpleton then! You know the value of the yellow boys? All right then, I’ll give you one or two, if you do your job properly! But,” continued the warder, leading his companion to the further end of the second cellar, “you’ll have to look out if you present your banker with one of those pieces, for the little bits of shiny won’t pass everywhere – you’ve got to keep your eye open – and open wide too!” Cranajour nodded comprehension:

“False money! False money!” he murmured.

There was a very big, strong door: an iron bar kept it closed. Nibet raised it with Cranajour’s help. Through the door the two men passed into a long dark passage, swept by a sharp rush of air. The floor of it was paved, and at the side of it flowed a pestilential stream, carrying along in its slow-moving water a miasma of feculent filth: it was thick with foul impurities.

“The little collecting sewer of the Cité,” whispered Nibet. Pointing to a grey patch in the distance he put his mouth to Cranajour’s ear.

“See the daylight yonder? That’s where the sewer discharges itself into the Seine : it’s there the boatman and his load will be waiting for us presently.” Nibet stopped dead; drew Cranajour back by the sleeve, and stepped stealthily backwards to the massive doors of the cellar. An unaccustomed noise had alarmed the warder. In profound silence the two men stood listening intently. There was no mistake! The sound of sharp regular steps could be clearly heard coming from that part of the sewer opposite the opening.