“But every day?”
“Every day it is the same thing,” was his reply, accompanied with a
thick puff of tobacco smoke.
He then tapped with a sou on the top of the marble table, to attract the
attention of the waiter, and called out:
“Waiter, two 'bocks.'”
A voice in the distance repeated:
“Two bocks for the fourth table.”
Another voice, more distant still, shouted out:
“Here they are!”
Immediately a man with a white apron appeared, carrying two “bocks,”
which he set down, foaming, on the table, spilling some of the yellow
liquid on the sandy floor in his haste.
Des Barrets emptied his glass at a single draught and replaced it on the
table, while he sucked in the foam that had been left on his mustache.
He next asked:
“What is there new?”