"For my part," said Célestin, "I employ his comrade, Jean Ficelle; he's a very intelligent fellow. There's a third one, whose name is Paul, I think, who stands with them; he will do Tobie's errand." "All right, messieurs," said Pigeonnier. "Let us go and find our messengers. By the way--how about my letter for the fair Herminie?" "Faith! I forgot to write it; but we have time enough, I'll write it at the restaurant; we must hurry, it's five o'clock now." III THE MESSENGERS On Rue du Helder, near the boulevard, in front of a handsome house, three street messengers had their regular stand. On the afternoon of which we are writing, all three were at their post. One lay at full length on his _crochets_, which he had placed on the ground, horizontally, in such wise as to form a sort of cot-bed; it was rather narrow, but its occupant had become so accustomed to it that he had no difficulty in maintaining his place, and never fell over the side. Another was sitting on a stone bench against the house. He was smoking a pipe, and had in his hands a disgustingly greasy and dirty pack of cards, with which he was apparently practising the false cut and divers other tricks of that sort. The third messenger was on his feet, leaning against the wall, with his eyes fixed on the topmost floor of a high building almost opposite. The man lying on the _crochets_ seemed to be in the prime of life; he was of medium height, but the breadth of his shoulders and the size of the muscles in his sinewy limbs pointed him out as a man with whom it would be dangerous to quarrel. His face was frank and good-humored; his small, light blue eyes expressed recklessness and merriment; his nose was rather large, and sometimes red at the end; his full lips denoted a kindly and obliging disposition; and his abundant light hair, which blew about at the pleasure of the wind, surmounted a high forehead, wherein the brain must have had ample room to exercise its faculties. He was dressed like most messengers,--a jacket and loose trousers; but he wore no neckerchief; his shirt, fastened by a button, disclosed a neck much whiter than one would have supposed from the color of his hands and face. The invariable habit of wearing nothing about his neck at any season of the year, even when the cold was most severe, was responsible for the sobriquet of _Sans-Cravate_, which had come to be the only name by which the messenger was known to the persons who employed him, and even to most of his friends.