Granville's estate

According to the price that Sologne said, Louis calculated silently. If what Sologne said is true, then the cost of selling about 800 kilograms of high-grade tea can probably recover more than 6000 francs. Even if the remaining tea leaves were resold at the original price, the net income of about [-] louis d'or with a face value of [-] francs could be reaped overall.This profit is quite high. Last time Alred said that the money he could get was two hundred louis. If the gap in the middle was loss and other costs, it would be justified.

And Sologne's ability is obviously more than that.

"In addition to one-fifth of the high-grade tea, there is about a quarter of the middle-grade tea that is better than ordinary tea. This part is sold at an average price of 8 francs per kilogram, and there are still left There are not many." Sologne said, "I sell the rest at a low price of 3 francs per kilogram, and those merchants who buy high-grade tea and middle-grade tea are often happy to take advantage of it, so that they sell quickly. It needs to occupy my warehouse all the time. A large part of the tea leaves you see below already have other owners, and they will be transported out from here one after another."

This sounds quite feasible. Even if he has doubts about Sologne, Louis has to admire his business acumen and his ingenious grasp of the price.

"I saw a porter on the first floor, is that the worker you hired?" Louis thought of the man resting on the rope, and asked, "I only saw him, there was no one else, is he going to be alone? Move these thousands of kilograms of tea?"

"Of course, I hired him for ten francs a month, and fed him and lodged him. He's a hard worker, and a lot better than the cunning fellow I had hired before."

Louis almost thought he had misheard the porter's wages.

"Ten francs a month?"

This is too little, right?Even in Magon, a textile worker can earn at least two or three hundred francs a year, and Louis himself has to pay a higher price than ten francs a month when hiring workers during the busiest grape harvest season. That's still in the provinces where prices are relatively low!

But Sologne doesn't seem to think so.

"Do you think it's too much? In fact, I think eight francs a month is enough." Sologne said, "After all, this man has been in prison several times for stealing bread. It is recorded in his passport Clearly, no one but me would have hired him at all; but considering that my last porter was not happy to leave in a tantrum on only eight francs a month, in order to prevent such a thing from happening again, I gave my wages To ten francs—that's an increase of a quarter!"

criminal?A criminal who has been to prison many times?

Louis was taken aback by the terrible thing that Sologne said that the porter had been in prison, but maybe it was because it was in the notorious No.12 district, Sologne and Alred They seem to be used to this kind of thing.

"Actually, I think the previous one is okay. The main reason is that you have to move too many goods, so he doesn't want to do it." Alred doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with the current porter being a criminal. Yes—maybe he thought it was justifiable to steal bread because of hunger, or even if there was something wrong with Sologne, he didn't think there was anything wrong with this pitifully low wage at all, he was right Sologne said: "I think this one is also quite tired now. When we came, he didn't even have the strength to stand up and say hello."

Sologne shrugged, and when he talked about these poor people who were squeezed by him, he showed a cruel indifference towards heretics.

"There is nothing to say about this reason. I don't care whether he has a criminal record in his passport. I will give him a job, pay him money, provide daily bread, and allow him to live with me at night. No need Facing the police patrolling at night on the street, you don’t have to worry about catching a cold and killing your little one when it rains, which is quite kind.” Sologne said, “If he doesn’t want to do it, some people will rob him.” Let’s do it, the dyeing workshop next to us doesn’t have such good conditions as me, and the bread they eat will be deducted from their wages!”

It sounds like there is nothing wrong with it. After all, Sologne is the one who hired the porter, and it's hard for others to say much.

"Does the porter sleep on the sofa here at night?" Louis flipped through the ledger in his hand, and glanced at the book in Alred's hand. There were scrawled numbers in his eyes, some amounts and purchase quantities. They are all quite large, and some need to be carefully identified to distinguish what is written, probably because the recorder wrote in a hurry at that time.In order to avoid the embarrassment of having nothing to say on the third floor, he asked this casually.

Mary, who had been sitting on the sofa staring at Louis, giggled.

"The sofa is mine." Mary twisted her body like a snake, and licked her lips: "It's mine during the day, and mine at night, but if it's you, I'd be more than happy not to take your gold coins and you share."

"..." Louis pretended not to hear Mary's words, but in this way, he couldn't think of where the porter could live. Could there be sleeping places on the first and second floors where the goods were stored?

"He sleeps on the first floor at night, and guards the door to prevent thieves from breaking in."

"I don't seem to see such a thing as a bed on the first floor," Louis recalled the layout of the first floor in wonder, and made sure that he didn't even see the simplest bed made of straw.

Sologne glanced at Louis, as if seeing some strange alien.

"Isn't there a rope?" He said.

Louis didn't realize it at first, but when he realized that Sologne meant that the thick ropes and the open space they saw on the first floor were the "beds" for the porters, he suddenly understood that Alred had underestimated That's exactly what he said.

——"He can do anything to save money."

"...I think if there are discarded logs, you can build a bed on the ground, otherwise people will easily catch a cold and get sick." Considering that Sologne is the one who pays the porter, Louis can only tactfully say Put forward your own suggestion, "If you are sick, it will be troublesome, and you may infect others."

"There are no abandoned things in No. 12 area. Everything here will be used, even human bones." Sologne said, "But you don't have to worry about him, Mr. Farentin, have you stayed in the rope hotel? ?”

This is another new vocabulary that Louis has never heard before: "Rope hotel? What is that place? It sounds like a kind of hotel."

"It is to provide homeless people with no money to sleep at night. There are many homeless people in District No.12. They don't have their own houses, and they can't afford to rent even the most dilapidated attic. They can only spend a living at night. Ding went to sleep in a rope hotel." Sologne stared into Louis' eyes, "There is nothing in that kind of hotel, only a thick rope stretched across the room, leading from one end to the other, and the only people staying overnight You can sit or lie down on the ground and sleep with your head on a rope. When it's time to get up, the hotel people will pull the rope up, and the sleeper will fall to the ground."

"Mr. Farentin, you and Alred probably can't imagine this kind of so-called hotel with nothing, right? But when my worker was not hired by me, he couldn't even afford to live in such a rope hotel, and he could only sleep at night. Dodging the patrolling police in the shadows of the street. So you don't have to worry about him being dissatisfied with the accommodations I've provided him, he's enjoying more than he ever dreamed of before - just take my last one Let’s talk about the worker, after he left my place, he wandered to other districts, and now he is probably captured by the patrol again.”

Even if you haven't experienced it yourself, you only need to listen to Sologne's description to know that this is a kind of cruel extreme poverty that has exceeded the limit of human imagination. This kind of miserable life is common in District No.12 It exists, and everyone seems to take it for granted.

Even Alred took Sologne's cruel treatment of the porter for granted.

"This treatment is indeed acceptable in District No.12. Some female workers here embroider fabrics for cloth merchants every day, earning one sou for each piece of embroidery. They can only earn three or four sous after working more than ten hours a day, which is only five or six a month. A franc salary!"

Alred said so to Louis.

Louis looked at his friend, and at Sologne who was sitting on the other side without changing his face, he felt as if something was stuck in his heart, but in the end he didn't say anything, just sighed silently.

They spent a whole afternoon checking the two ledgers that recorded the time and amount of goods sold, counted the amount of tea stored in Moore Street, determined which ones had been sold and which ones had not been sold, and finally calculated The profit recorded in Sologne's account book is indeed almost the same; during this process, Louis deliberately chatted with the porter on the first floor, and Sologne did not intend to stop him, but that took the opportunity to ask Louis The porter who asked for a ten-cent copper coin could not say anything other than telling Louis that he moved the goods under Sologne's command every day.

As for Louis's temptation to join their business, Sologne also refused very simply, which dispelled Louis' suspicion of him a bit.

"Such a good opportunity to buy goods at a low price does not come across every day. Of course, if there is a similar opportunity in the future, I will consider your wishes today."

The law and order in District No.12 is not very good. The sky has not yet darkened, and Joseph has been urging them to leave before dark, so as not to encounter any bad things in this area-many of the street lights here are Bad, and there are so many homeless people on the street, who knows what they can do!

When he got into the carriage, Louis stared at the silhouette of the No. 150 building at 12 Moore Street from the car window. In the dimming light, this building and the entire No.[-] district looked extremely gloomy.

"It's such a brutal place and I miss my hometown already."