y!" cried Cerizet. "And so you have invented
this little game of hocus-pocus because you hold in your fingers fifteen
thousand francs that don't belong to you!"

"But I've added ten thousand francs to them. Besides, you and I know
each other."

"If you are able to get ten thousand francs out of your bourgeois you
can surely get fifteen," said Cerizet. "For thirty thousand I'm your
man. Frankness for frankness, you know."

"You ask the impossible," replied Theodose. "At this very moment, if you
had to do with Claparon instead of with me, your fifteen thousand would
be lost, for Thuillier is to-day the owner of that house."

"I'll speak to Claparon," said Cerizet, pretending to go and consult
him, and mounting the stairs to the bedroom, from which Claparon had
only just departed on his road to Havre.

The two adversaries had been speaking, we should here remark, in a
manner not to be overheard; and every time that Theodose raised his
voice Cerizet would make a gesture, intimating that Claparon, from
above, might be listening. The five minutes during which Theodose heard
what seemed to be the murmuring of two voices were torture to him, for
he had staked his very life upon the issue. Cerizet at last came down,
with a smile upon his lips, his eyes sparkling with infernal mischief,
his whole frame quivering in his joy, a Lucifer of gaiety!

"I know nothing, so it seems!" he cried, shaking his shoulders, "but
Claparon knows a great deal; he has worked with the big-wig bankers, and
when I told what you wanted he began to laugh, and said, 'I thought as
much!' You will have to bring me the twenty-five thousand you offer me
to-morrow morning, my lad; and as much more before you can recover your
notes."

"Why?" asked Theodose, feeling his spinal column liquidizing as if the
discharge of some inward electric fluid had melted it.

"The house is ours."

"How?"

"Claparon has bit it in under the name of one of his creditors, a little
toad named Sauvaignou. Desroches, the lawyer, has taken the case, and
you'll get a notice to-morrow. This affair will oblige Claparon, Dutocq,
and me to raise funds. What would become of me without Claparon! So I
forgive him--yes, I forgave him, and though you may not believe it, my
dear friend, I actually kissed him! Change your terms."

The last three words were horrible to hear, especially when illustrated
by the face of the speaker, who amused himself by playing a scene from
the "Legatai