A few sous were of small account. They insured a meal, but not a lodging. As he was thus reflecting, he saw near by and presently beside him the gentleman who had so highly appreciated the return of his handkerchief. The coat pockets were large in those days, and the crowd was great. A little white corner of lace besought Master François, crying, "I am food and lodging for thee!" Whereupon it was done, and a lace handkerchief changed owners. It cannot be said that these downward steps cost François any moral discomfort. He grinned as he thought of the beggar’s perplexity, and laughed outright as he felt how complete had been his own joy in the satisfaction of possession could he have made the owner of the kerchief understand that he had suffered not merely a theft, but the punishment of injustice. François was now too well versed in the ways of the street-boy, too dirty and too ragged, to fear the Cité. Thither he went, and found a thieves’ shop, where he sold the handkerchief, and got ten francs for what was worth thirty. The question of a place where he could be sure of a bed was his first consideration on coming into his fortune. In the long, warm summers of France one who was not particular could find numerous roosting-places, but in winter a more constant home was to be desired. In the Cité François had occasionally lodged here and there when he could afford to pay, and had been turned out when he had no more sous. Now, being affluent, and therefore hard to please, he wandered until he came upon the lodging-house of an old woman in the Rue Perpignan. He knew of her as a dealer in thieves’ goods, and as ever ready to shelter the lucky—and, it was suspected, as willing to betray those who were persistently unfortunate. What drew him to this woman’s house it were hard to tell. She was repulsive in appearance, but, strangely enough, was clean as to her person, dress, and abode. Asylum life had taught François to be cleanly. He declares in his memoirs that he was by habit neat, and that it was the absence of dirt which first tempted him into a relation which was so largely to affect his after life. When he became one of this woman’s lodgers he took a step which was for him of moment. Now for the first time he was to be in the company of old and practised thieves; but he was not yet of an age to be troubled as to the future or to reflect upon the past. The horizon of youth is small. He found plenty of masters to educate him in the evil business into which he had been driven by relentless fate. Never was pupil more ready. His hostess appreciated the cleverness of her new lodger, but it was long before he himself realized how strange was the aspect and how sinister the nature of this mother of evil.