is to be hoped his creditors will give him time!" Above all this
uproar was heard a voice, sharp and piercing like a cat's, lamenting, and
relating with sobs the terrible misfortune of last night. At about three
in the morning the inhabitants of the rue St. Victor had been startled
out of their sleep by the cry of "Fire, fire!" A conflagration had burst
forth in Derues' cellar, and though its progress had been arrested and
the house saved from destruction, all the goods stored therein had
perished. It apparently meant a considerable loss in barrels of oil,
casks of brandy, boxes of soap, etc., which Derues estimated at not less
than nine thousand livres.

By what unlucky chance the fire had been caused he had no idea. He
recounted his visit to Madame Legrand, and pale, trembling, hardly able
to sustain himself, he cried--

"I shall die of grief! A poor man as ill as I am! I am lost! I am
ruined!"

A harsh voice interrupted his lamentations, and drew the attention of the
crowd to a woman carrying printed broadsides, and who forced a passage
through the crowd up to the shop door. She unfolded one of her sheets,
and cried as loudly and distinctly as her husky voice permitted--

"Sentence pronounced by the Parliament of Paris against John Robert
Cassel, accused and convicted of Fraudulent Bankruptcy!"

Derues looked up and saw a street-hawker who used to come to his shop for
a drink, and with whom he had had a violent quarrel about a month
previously, she having detected him in a piece of knavery, and abused him
roundly in her own style, which was not lacking in energy. He had not
seen her since. The crowd generally, and all the gossips of the quarter,
who held Derues in great veneration, thought that the woman's cry was
intended as an indirect insult, and threatened to punish her for this
irreverence. But, placing one hand on her hip, and with the other
warning off the most pressing by a significant gesture--

"Are you still befooled by his tricks, fools that you are? Yes, no doubt
there was a fire in the cellar last night, no doubt his creditors will be
geese enough to let him off paying his debts! But what you don't know
is, that he didn't really lose by it at all!"

"He lost all his goods!" the crowd cried on all sides. "More than nine
thousand livres! Oil and brandy, do you think those won't burn? The old
witch, she drinks enough to know! If one put a candle near her she would
take fire, fast e