"Oh, no! Sans-Cravate, you're mistaken; and, anyway, what good would it do me to love that charming creature? Can a man of my class, one of the common people, presume to raise his eyes to someone who will not come down to his level?" "Look you, a man always presumes, and does his reasoning afterward. And then, it don't seem to me that a dressmaker's apprentice is such a very great personage; and, even if you are a messenger, aren't you as good a man as another? If a duchess would have me, I'd adore her, duchess and all.--Great God! if Bastringuette should hear me, she'd make me go without tobacco." "Yes," said Paul, with a sigh, "a messenger's trade requires that he be an honest man. I don't blush for my calling, I assure you. And yet, there was a time when I was justified in hoping that I might occupy a higher station. A most excellent man, happening to see me, when I was ten years old, in the charitable institution where I was brought up, took a fancy to me and offered to take charge of me, as he needed someone to do errands for him. Monsieur Desroches was a respectable tradesman, and his proposition was thankfully accepted. I left that refuge of the unfortunate, where I had passed my childhood, and went to live with my new patron, in the Marais. As he was satisfied with the zeal and promptitude with which I did the errands he gave me to do, Monsieur Desroches had me taught to read and write and cipher, and employed me in his office; and every day he would give me a friendly tap on the shoulder, and say: 'You're doing well, Paul; keep on, and you'll make your way.'" "Good! He was what I call a fine old cove! And that's how it is that you know so much, and that you're so much better set up than the rest of us. Well, why didn't you stay with that fine old fellow? I suppose you played some prank or other. _Dame!_ boys will be boys!" "Oh, no! not that at all! I would never have left good Monsieur Desroches. But after I had lived with him eight years, he and his wife treating me like their own child, my benefactor was utterly ruined by a bad failure; and the poor man died of grief, because he was compelled to ask for time to pay his notes." "Sapristi! you ought to have kept some of that man's seed. His kind are not common in the market." "I was eighteen years old at that time. I tried to find a place, to get into some business house; but I couldn't find anything. However, I had to earn money, for one must live; so I soon made up my mind: I bought a pair of _crochets_ and started in as a messenger." "And you did well. There is no foolish trade, as one of the old troubadours said! But how did you happen to come into this quarter instead of staying in the Marais, where you were known?"