‘. . . and makes my cousin pregnant.’

‘Your cousin? Which cousin?’ asked Trousselier, enthralled.

‘My cousin Pauline.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, indeed! The sublime Pauline. The very one! And . . . he gives her syphilis. Wait, that’s not even the end of the story . . . it continues! After making life hellish for the whole family, our man – when he finds himself before the recruitment officer – nonchalantly pulls down his coat to show off his superb tattoo from Toulon prison. Then off he goes, hands in his pockets, happy with his first down payment, and his board and lodging, on the hunt for another family of dupes.’

‘And?’

‘Well, my cousin left yesterday!’

‘But that’s awful!’ said Auguste, horrified, his effeminate hands pressed to his lips.

‘Have you tried Rue Piat?’ suggested Perrachon.

‘What’s on Rue Piat?’

‘There are these mysterious advertisements. Take a look . . .’

And the young man pulled two newspapers from the pile of dailies lying around.

‘Look, there, down the bottom, it’s in there every day.’

‘Serviceman entitled to furlough is offering to replace young soldier currently enrolled as a student: present yourself at 12 Rue Piat.’

‘Several young men wishing to enlist in the army as substitutes: present yourself at 12 Rue Piat.’

‘Where’s Rue Piat?’

‘At the top of Rue de Belleville, between the Buttes-Chaumont Park and the customs posts.’

Auguste consulted his watch.

‘If I take a carriage now, I’ll make it before nightfall.’

The young man left without further ado and hailed a fiacre to take him to the address indicated.

The cab headed down Boulevard Poissonnière, then turned at Rue du Faubourg du Temple to head up to Belleville, as Rue Piat lay well beyond the invisible border drawn by Boulevards Strasbourg, Sébastopol and Saint Michel, which divided Paris in two, the wealthy on one side, the poor on the other.

Although he had never ventured so deep into these neighbourhoods, he was aware what living conditions there were like since Haussmann’s opening up of the city and the dizzying increase in rents. Thousands of people were crammed into rickety, overpopulated buildings or makeshift dwellings amounting to little more than a pile of clapboards, and all this in deplorably unhygienic circumstances. He knew the labourers who went to work in the city centre every morning came from these neighbourhoods. That they were exploited, lucky to be paid even three francs a day, and their wives half that, when in order to feed and lodge a family, a minimum of four francs was required for a room in a slumlord’s lodgings, even in Belleville.