oots. No friend nor foe of mine,
nor those that are neither and want something of me, come to see me on
foot.--My dear M. Cerizet, do you understand? You will not wipe your
boots on my carpet again' (looking as he spoke at the mud that whitened
the enemy's soles). 'Convey my compliments and sympathy to Claparon,
poor buffer, for I shall file this business under the letter Z.'

"All this with an easy good-humor fit to give a virtuous citizen the
colic.

"'You are wrong, Monsieur le Comte,' retorted Cerizet, in a slightly
peremptory tone. 'We will be paid in full, and that in a way which you
may not like. That is why I came to you first in a friendly spirit, as
is right and fit between gentlemen--'

"'Oh! so that is how you understand it?' began Maxime, enraged by this
last piece of presumption. There was something of Talleyrand's wit in
the insolent retort, if you have quite grasped the contrast between
the two men and their costumes. Maxime scowled and looked full at the
intruder; Cerizet not merely endured the glare of cold fury, but even
returned it, with an icy, cat-like malignance and fixity of gaze.

"'Very good, sir, go out--'

"'Very well, good-day, Monsieur le Comte. We shall be quits before six
months are out.'

"'If you can steal the amount of your bill, which is legally due I own,
I shall be indebted to you, sir,' replied Maxime. 'You will have taught
me a new precaution to take. I am very much your servant.'

"'Monsieur le Comte,' said Cerizet, 'it is I, on the contrary, who am
yours.'

"Here was an explicit, forcible, confident declaration on either side.
A couple of tigers confabulating, with the prey before them, and a fight
impending, would have been no finer and no shrewder than this pair; the
insolent fine gentleman as great a blackguard as the other in his soiled
and mud-stained clothes.

"Which will you lay your money on?" asked Desroches, looking round at an
audience, surprised to find how deeply it was interested.

"A pretty story!" cried Malaga. "My dear boy, go on, I beg of you. This
goes to one's heart."

"Nothing commonplace could happen between two fighting-cocks of that
calibre," added La Palferine.

"Pooh!" cried Malaga. "I will wager my cabinet-maker's invoice (the
fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was too many for Maxime."

"I bet on Maxime," said Cardot. "Nobody ever caught him napping."

Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him.

"Mlle. Chocardell