You may also remind me of the two young men on the second floor, above the apartment you are going to take.But, monsieur, those two poor men of letters are pursued by creditors.They are in hiding; they are away in the daytime and only return at night; they have no reason to fear robbers or assassins; besides, they always go together and are armed.
I myself obtained permission from the prefecture of police that they should carry arms."[Yes, this would explain why there are no windows on the ground floor of Barbet's building.I would not like to stay anywhere that was easily externally accessible in a city, but more because of drunks than anything else.--JB.]
"Monsieur," said Godefroid, "I am not afraid of robbers, for the same reasons that make those gentlemen invulnerable; and I despise life so heartily that if I were murdered by mistake I should bless the murderer!""You do not look to me very unhappy," said the old man, examining Godefroid.
"I have, at the most, enough to get me bread to live on; and I have come to this place, monsieur, because of its silent neighborhood.May I ask you what interest you have in driving me away?"The old man hesitated; he saw Madame Vauthier close behind them.
Godefroid, who examined him attentively, was astonished at the degree of thinness to which grief, perhaps hunger, perhaps toil, had reduced him.There were signs of all those causes upon that face, where the parched skin clung to the bones as if it had been burned by the sun of Africa.The dome of the forehead, high and threatening, overshadowed a pair of steel-blue eyes,--two cold, hard, sagacious, penetrating eyes, like those of savages, surrounded by a black and wrinkled circle.The large nose, long and very thin, and the prominent chin, gave the old man a strong resemblance to the well-known mask popularly ascribed to Don Quixote; but a wicked Don Quixote, without illusions,--a terrible Don Quixote.