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The Remonencqs' diet consisted of bread and herrings, with the outside
leaves of lettuce or vegetable refuse selected from the heaps
deposited in the kennel before the doors of eating-houses. The two
between them did not spend more than fivepence a day on food (bread
included), and La Remonencq earned the money by sewing or spinning.
Remonencq came to Paris in the first instance to work as an
errand-boy. Between the years 1825 and 1831 he ran errands for dealers
in curiosities in the Boulevard Beaumarchais or coppersmiths in the Rue
de Lappe. It is the usual start in life in his line of business. Jews,
Normans, Auvergnats, and Savoyards, those four different races of men
all have the same instincts, and make their fortunes in the same way;
they spend nothing, make small profits, and let them accumulate at
compound interest. Such is their trading charter, and _that_ charter
is no delusion.
Remonencq at this moment had made it up with his old master Monistrol;
he did business with wholesale dealers, he was a _chineur_ (the
technical word), plying his trade in the _banlieue_, which, as
everybody knows, extends for some forty leagues round Paris.
After fourteen years of business, he had sixty thousand francs in hand
and a well-stocked shop. He lived in the Rue de Normandie because the
rent was low, but casual customers were scarce, most of his goods were
sold to other dealers, and he was content with moderate gains. All his
business transactions were carried on in the Auvergue dialect or
_charabia_, as people call it.
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