CHAPTER n

TOUSE'S workshop was a long, low vault of a place
J dependent for light upon its arched entrance. A
small door at the back led into the house, but the
entrance gave direct onto the street, and here Jouse
would work half in and half out whenever his job
permitted of this, for he dearly loved the fresh air and
the sunshine. Spitting upon the rough palms of his
hands he would pause to exchange the time of day or
some crude but harmless joke with a neighbour, and
as likely as not, from across the street, Eusebe would
start to make jokes of his own which, it must be
admitted, were seldom quite harmless.
Jouse had an apprentice, one Anfos by name, a
youth of seventeen who was simple-minded. He was
tall and robust and his lips and cheeks were already
well covered with straggling black hair, for Anfos
was too childish to handle a razor. His brown eyes
were like those of Mireio, the bitch, apologetic and
slightly bewildered. In body a man for more than
three years, his mind still dwelt in the pastures of
childhood, but at times this mind of his realized
vaguely that all was not well any more with those
pastures, that something wider might stretch just
beyond, and then his brown eyes would look slightly
bewildered.
Anfos was a distant cousin of Marie's whom Jouse
had taken on out of pity a few weeks after Christophe's
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