hem, and serve
up the liquor in a silver coffee-pot, on a silver salver. Haw, haw,
haw!"

"Is it possible? reduced to this?" said Edouard gravely.

"Don't you be so weak as to pity them," cried the remorseless plebeian.
"Why don't they melt their silver into soup, and cut down their plate
into rashers of bacon? why not sell the superfluous, and buy the
needful, which it is grub? And, above all, why don't they let their old
tumble-down palace to some rich grocer, and that accursed garden along
with it, where I sweat gratis, and live small and comfortable, and pay
honest men for their little odd jobs, and"--

Here Riviere interrupted him, and asked if it was really true about the
beans.

"True?" said Dard, "why, I have seen Rose doing it for the old woman's
breakfast: it was Rose invented the move. A girl of nineteen beginning
already to deceive the world! But they are all tarred with the same
stick. Down with the aristocrats!"

"Dard," said Riviere, "you are a brute."

"Me, citizen?" inquired Dard with every appearance of genuine surprise.

Edouard Riviere rose from his seat in great excitement. Dard's abuse of
the family he was lately so bitter against had turned him right round.
He pitied the very baroness herself, and forgave her declining his
visit.

"Be silent," said he, "for shame! There is such a thing as noble
poverty; and you have described it. I might have disdained these people
in their prosperity, but I revere them in their affliction. And I'll
tell you what, don't you ever dare to speak slightly of them again in my
presence, or"--

He did not conclude his threat, for just then he observed that a
strapping girl, with a basket at her feet, was standing against the
corner of the Auberge, in a mighty careless attitude, but doing nothing,
so most likely listening with all her ears and soul. Dard, however, did
not see her, his back being turned to her as he sat; so he replied at
his ease,--

"I consent," said he very coolly: "that is your affair; but permit me,"
and here he clenched his teeth at remembrance of his wrongs, "to say
that I will no more be a scullery man without wages to these high-minded
starvelings, these illustrious beggars." Then he heated himself red-hot.
"I will not even be their galley slave. Next, I have done my last little
odd job in this world," yelled the now infuriated factotum, bouncing
up to his feet in brief fury. "Of two things one: either Jacintha quits
those aristos, or