Frenchman, Victor Goujon
by name, who had lost his employment as a watchmaker by reason of an
injury to his right hand, which destroyed its steadiness, and so he had
fallen upon evil days and odd jobs.

He was a little man of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable,
and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to
madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous
attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little
Frenchman, although wanting a shilling badly enough, would hurl back in
his face, almost weeping with impotent rage. "Pig! _Canaille_!" he would
scream. "Dirty pig of Africa! Take your sheelin' to vere you 'ave stole
it! _Voleur_! Pig!"

There was a tortoise living in the basement, of which Goujon had made
rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile,
flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the
tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then
Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury
that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages
between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state of
feeling between them.

Goujon, after correspondence with a relative in France who offered him
work, gave notice to leave, which expired on the day of the crime. At
about three that afternoon a housemaid, proceeding toward Rameau's rooms,
met Goujon as he was going away. Goujon bade her good-by, and, pointing in
the direction of Rameau's rooms, said exultantly: "Dere shall be no more
of the black pig for me; vit 'im I 'ave done for. Zut! I mock me of 'im!
'E vill never _tracasser_ me no more." And he went away.

The girl went to the outer door of Rameau's rooms, knocked, and got no
reply. Concluding that the tenant was out, she was about to use her keys,
when she found that the door was unlocked. She passed through the lobby
and into the sitting-room, and there fell in a dead faint at the sight
that met her eyes. Rameau lay with his back across the sofa and his
head--drooping within an inch of the ground. On the head was a fearful
gash, and below it was a pool of blood.

The girl must have lain unconscious for about ten minutes. When she came
to her senses, she dragged herself, terrified, from the room and up to the
housekeeper's apartments, where, being an excitable and nervous creature,
she only screamed "Murder!" and