etic and uncomplimentary; to which the latter replied
in as conciliatory a manner as he could assume. But it was impossible to
silence the enemy, and an increasing crowd of idlers began to assemble
round them.

"When will you pay me?" demanded the creditor. "I have an execution
against you. What is there in that box? Valuables which you cart away
secretly, in order to laugh at my just claims, as you did two years ago?"

Derues shuddered all over; he exhausted himself in protestations; but the
other, almost beside himself, continued to shout.

"Oh!" he said, turning to the crowd, "all these tricks and grimaces and
signs of the cross are no good. I must have my money, and as I know what
his promises are worth, I will pay myself! Come, you knave, make haste.
Tell me what there is in that box; open it, or I will fetch the police."

The crowd was divided between the creditor and debtor, and possibly a
free fight would have begun, but the general attention was distracted by
the arrival of another spectator. A voice heard above all the tumult
caused a score of heads to turn, it was the voice of a woman crying:

"The abominable history of Leroi de Valine, condemned to death at the age
of sixteen for having poisoned his entire family!"

Continually crying her wares, the drunken, staggering woman approached
the crowd, and striking out right and left with fists and elbows, forced
her way to Derues.

"Ah! ah!" said she, after looking him well over, "is it you, my gossip
Derues! Have you again a little affair on hand like the one when you set
fire to your shop in the rue Saint-Victor?"

Derues recognised the hawker who had abused him on the threshold of his
shop some years previously, and whom he had never seen since. "Yes, yes,"
she continued, "you had better look at me with your little round cat's
eyes. Are you going to say you don't know me?"

Derues appealed to his creditor. "You see," he said, "to what insults
you are exposing me. I do not know this woman who abuses me."

"What!--you don't know me! You who accused me of being a thief! But
luckily the Maniffets have been known in Paris as honest people for
generations, while as for you----"

"Sir," said Derues, "this case contains valuable wine which I am
commissioned to sell. To-morrow I shall receive the money for it;
to-morrow, in the course of the day, I will pay what I owe you. But I am
waited for now, do not in Heaven's name detain me longer, and