While Sans-Cravate was speaking, Paul had turned his eyes toward the dressmaker's windows again, and seemed, in fact, to have ceased to listen to his comrade. But at that moment the third messenger, who had not spoken, uttered a grunt of satisfaction and jumped up from the bench, crying: "I have it, I have done it; oh! I have it as neat as you please!" "What is it that you have, Jean Ficelle?" asked Sans-Cravate. The person addressed raised his head and replied, with a disdainful glance at his comrades: "Oh! something that I can use to take greenhorns in." "Another new game, I'll bet; for you're a very devil of a gambler!" "Well, why not? Games of chance are tabooed in Paris, but the sharks and blacklegs in good society find a way to play, all the same. They have secret meetings, where they can ruin themselves as nice as you please, on the pretence of having a little dance." "How do you know?" "Oh! I know everything. Well, then, why shouldn't the small fry, the less select society, have the same chance? But they go about it more openly. The men who run games of chance set them up in the open air, all ready to cut stakes at sight of a policeman or a detective. You don't know anything about it, you fellows; you are greenhorns. Just listen to me a minute, for your instruction." "A nice kind of instruction we are likely to get from you, I fancy." "But it's always a help, even if it's only to keep you from being taken in by sharpers.--Come, Sans-Cravate, come and sit down with me." Sans-Cravate concluded to take his seat on the stone bench, beside Jean Ficelle, who continued, with the important air of one who considers himself much more intelligent than those to whom he speaks: "Near the barriers, under the arches of the bridges, on the outer boulevards, and in the neighborhood of the wine market, are the places where you will usually find the men in blouses and plain caps who are called _croupiers_, which means: men who run a game. In the summertime, if you should go and look under the arches of the bridge over the canal near Pont d'Austerlitz, you would see a number of games in full blast. You see groups of men--first, the _croupiers_ and their confederates (for wherever there's games of chance, there's confederates); then, peasants, countrymen, and workmen with their loaves under their arms; these are the pigeons, who let themselves be plucked by the bait of a possible gain." "What a lot this Jean Ficelle knows!--You seem to have made a study of it!"