Chapter 6 - In the Service of a Master Apprentices and Journeymen

Summary

Four months into the meat-eating season, Jean Baptiste Nez, a garçon boucher, suddenly found himself out on the street in the middle of the night, looking for work. Hired by Master Butcher Antoine Rebourg for a weekly wage, room, and board, Nez felt that he had been treated unfairly and went to the commissaire to file a complaint. According to the young stall worker, the master “ordered him to get up [and begin working] at midnight to do four cattle and twelve to fifteen sheep after having supped [and finished his work] at nine-thirty.” Nez had not eaten his final meal of the day and had only gotten to bed at a quarter to eleven. An hour later, his master “threw the blanket and sheet from his bed to his feet and then went back downstairs.” The master yelling up to his worker challenged him “to get up and defend himself as much as he can defend [himself].” Whereupon, the butcher's wife gave the young man his wages telling him to go out at a certain hour when Profit (a renter in the butcher's house) would give Nez his blanket back so he could sleep outside. Nez reported that, “without knowing for what reason, he found himself on the street, obliged to look for a shop” (presumably where he could find work). Within five days he found a position with Charles Drieux across the city, yet knowing that without an official reprieve–what he called “a certificate,” officially known as a congé–he would not be able to change jobs.