Their short-clothes, which were threadbare through long service, displayed here and there an occasional rent which had been awkwardly patched with material of a different color; their jackets, which took the place of doublets, were too long for them, lacked several buttons, and were worn through at the elbows; and lastly, the caps which covered their heads were entirely shapeless, and did not even conceal the tips of their ears. In these two companions in idling and evil fortune the reader will already have recognized the two clerks whom Maître Bourdinard had dismissed from his employment. "Do you know that it's terribly cold this morning, Bahuchet?" "Pardieu! do I know it? I feel it quite as keenly as you; except on the head, however, as I have hair to protect me, whereas you--naught!--You must regret your plaster at this moment; you were wrong to take it off, Plumard, for it made a sort of little skullcap for you." "Do you propose to begin your wretched jests again, Bahuchet? I give you warning that I am in no mood to put up with them!" "Come, come! let us not quarrel, my dear fellow; that won't give us a breakfast, and that is what we must have. My stomach has a shockingly hollow ring, and fasting doesn't warm one's blood." "No, indeed--far from it!" "I thought that you would go to see your uncle the clothes dealer, Plumard. What the devil! if he should give you nothing but a cloak to carry you through the winter,--and that would be the least he could do for his nephew,--you might try to get a cloak large enough to make each of us one." "I went to my uncle's this morning, while you were still asleep in that dram shop where we passed the night. But he received me so unkindly that I have no desire to go there again. He called me vagabond, good-for-nothing, robber--all on account of that miserable orange-colored suit that we consumed together, and for which he arrested that long-legged Chevalier Passedix!--Oh! he has that episode on his stomach!" "What a fuss to make over a few faded duds! What's the use of having uncles if they let you freeze to death?" "Holy forks! how hungry I am!" "Rascally solicitor, to turn us into the street!" "It's all the fault of that lanky, ill-built Gascon, who went to him and told him the story of the orange costume!" "And all the offices are supplied with clerks--no place to be found!" "If we could only find some other business!" "It's all one to me; I would take anything that was open!" "Even if it was a cook's place?" "Pardieu! I would take it, I would turn cook with all my heart! Can you imagine a more alluring trade at this moment? To stand in front of a nice hot oven and smell the odor of a number of saucepans from which you always select the choicest bits?"