re," all the while studying attentively the Provencal's
character.

"Oh, Cerizet!" cried Theodose; "I, who wished to do you so much good!"

"Don't you see, my dear fellow," returned Cerizet, "that between you and
me there ought to be _this_,--" and he struck his heart,--"of which you
have none. As soon as you thought you had a lever on us, you have tried
to knock us over. I saved you from the horrors of starvation and vermin!
You'll die like the idiot you are. We put you on the high-road to
fortune; we gave you a fine social skin and a position in which you
could grasp the future--and look what you do! _Now_ I know you! and from
this time forth, we shall go armed."

"Then it is war between us!" exclaimed Theodose.

"You fired first," returned Cerizet.

"If you pull me down, farewell to your hopes and plans; if you don't
pull me down, you have in me an enemy."

"That's just what I said yesterday to Dutocq; but, how can we help it?
We are forced to choose between two alternatives--we must go according
to circumstances. I'm a good-natured fellow myself," he added, after a
pause; "bring me your twenty-five thousand francs to-morrow morning and
Thuillier shall keep the house. We'll continue to help you at both ends,
but you'll have to pay up, my boy. After what has just happened that's
pretty kind, isn't it?"

And Cerizet patted Theodose on the shoulder, with a cynicism that seemed
to brand him more than the iron of the galleys.

"Well, give me till to-morrow at mid-day," replied the Provencal, "for
there'll be, as you said, some manipulation to do."

"I'll try to keep Claparon quiet; he's in such a hurry, that man!"

"To-morrow then," said Theodose, in the tone of a man who decides his
course.

"Good-night, friend," said Cerizet, in his nasal tone, which degraded
the finest word in the language. "There's one who has got a mouthful
to suck!" thought Cerizet, as he watched Theodose going down the street
with the step of a dazed man.

When la Peyrade reached the rue des Postes he went with rapid strides
to Madame Colleville's house, exciting himself as he walked along, and
talking aloud. The fire of his roused passions and the sort of inward
conflagration of which many Parisians are conscious (for such situations
abound in Paris) brought him finally to a pitch of frenzy and eloquence
which found expression, as he turned into the rue des Deux-Eglises, in
the words:--

"I will kill him!"

"There's a fellow who