nough!"

"Perhaps," replied the woman, with renewed gesticulations, "perhaps; but
I don't advise any of you to try. Anyhow, this fellow here is a rogue;
he has been emptying his cellar for the last three nights; there were
only old empty casks in it and empty packing-cases! Oh yes! I have
swallowed his daily lies like everybody else, but I know the truth by
now. He got his liquor taken away by Michael Lambourne's son, the
cobbler in the rue de la Parcheminerie. How do I know? Why, because the
young man came and told me!"

"I turned that woman out of my shop a month ago, for stealing," said
Derues.

Notwithstanding this retaliatory accusation, the woman's bold assertion
might have changed the attitude of the crowd and chilled the enthusiasm,
but at that moment a stout man pressed forward, and seizing the hawker by
the arm, said--

"Go, and hold your tongue, backbiting woman!"

To this man, the honour of Derues was an article of faith; he had not yet
ceased to wonder at the probity of this sainted person, and to doubt it
in the least was as good as suspecting his own.

"My dear friend," he said, "we all know what to think of you. I know you
well. Send to me tomorrow, and you shall have what goods you want, on
credit, for as long as is necessary. Now, evil tongue, what do you say
to that?"

"I say that you are as great a fool as the rest. Adieu, friend Derues;
go on as you have begun, and I shall be selling your 'sentence' some
day"; and dispersing the crowd with a few twirls of her right arm, she
passed on, crying--

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

This accusation emanated from too insignificant a quarter to have any
effect on Derues' reputation. However resentful he may have been at the
time, he got over it in consequence of the reiterated marks of interest
shown by his neighbours and all the quarter on account of his supposed
ruin, and the hawker's attack passed out of his mind, or probably she
might have paid for her boldness with her life.

But this drunken woman had none the less uttered a prophetic word; it was
the grain of sand on which, later, he was to be shipwrecked.

"All passions," says La Bruyere,--"all passions are deceitful; they
disguise themselves as much as possible from the public eye; they hide
from themselves. There is no vice which has not a counterfeit
resemblance to some virtue, a