One day shortly after this, at the bindery, his friend Poupin, absent, had failed to send the explanation customary in case of illness or domestic accident. There were two or three men employed in the place whose non-appearance, usually following close upon pay-day, was better unexplained, was in fact an implication of moral feebleness; but as a general thing Mr. Crookenden’s establishment was a haunt of punctuality and sobriety. Least of all had Eustache Poupin been in the habit of asking for a margin. Hyacinth knew how little indulgence he had ever craved, and this was part of his admiration for the extraordinary Frenchman, an ardent stoic, a cold conspirator and an exquisite artist, who was by far the most interesting person in the ranks of his acquaintance and whose conversation, in the workshop, helped him sometimes to forget the smell of leather and glue. His conversation! Hyacinth had had plenty of that and had endeared himself to the passionate refugee by the solemnity and candour of his attention. Poupin had come to England after the Commune of 1871, to escape the reprisals of the government of M. Thiers, and had remained there in spite of amnesties and rehabilitations. He was a Republican of the old-fashioned sort, of the note of 1848, humanitary and idealistic, infinitely addicted to fraternity and equality and inexhaustibly surprised and exasperated at finding so little enthusiasm for them in the land of his exile. He had a marked claim upon Hyacinth’s esteem and gratitude, for he had been his _parrain_, his protector at the bindery. When Anastasius Vetch found something for Miss Pynsent’s young charge to do, it was through the Frenchman, with whom he had accidentally made acquaintance, that he found it.