“Hey, hey! it is papa Mitral!” cried one of them, named Chaboisseau, a little old man who discounted for a publisher.

“Bless me, so it is!” said another, a broker named Metivier, “ha, that’s an old monkey well up in his tricks.”

“And you,” retorted Mitral, “you are an old crow who knows all about carcasses.”

“True,” said the stern Gobseck.

“What are you here for?  Have you come to seize friend Metivier?” asked Gigonnet, pointing to the broker, who had the bluff face of a porter.

“Your great-niece Elisabeth is out there, papa Gigonnet,” whispered Mitral.

“What! some misfortune?” said Bidault.  The old man drew his eyebrows together and assumed a tender look like that of an executioner when about to go to work officially.  In spite of his Roman virtue he must have been touched, for his red nose lost somewhat of its color.

“Well, suppose it is misfortune, won’t you help Saillard’s daughter? —­a girl who has knitted your stockings for the last thirty years!” cried Mitral.

“If there’s good security I don’t say I won’t,” replied Gigonnet.  “Falleix is in with them.  Falleix has just set up his brother as a broker, and he is doing as much business as the Brezacs; and what with? his mind, perhaps!  Saillard is no simpleton.”

“He knows the value of money,” put in Chaboisseau.

That remark, uttered among those old men, would have made an artist and thinker shudder as they all nodded their heads.

“But it is none of my business,” resumed Bidault-Gigonnet.  “I’m not bound to care for my neighbors’ misfortunes.  My principle is never to be off my guard with friends or relatives; you can’t perish except through weakness.  Apply to Gobseck; he is softer.”

The usurers all applauded these doctrines with a shake of their metallic heads.  An onlooker would have fancied he heard the creaking of ill-oiled machinery.

“Come, Gigonnet, show a little feeling,” said Chaboisseau, “they’ve knit your stockings for thirty years.”

“That counts for something,” remarked Gobseck.

“Are you all alone?  Is it safe to speak?” said Mitral, looking carefully about him.  “I come about a good piece of business.”

“If it is good, why do you come to us?” said Gigonnet, sharply, interrupting Mitral.

“A fellow who was a gentleman of the Bedchamber,” went on Mitral, “a former ’chouan,’—­what’s his name?—­La Billardiere is dead.”

“True,” said Gobseck.

“And our nephew is giving monstrances to the church,” snarled Gigonnet.

“He is not such a fool as to give them, he sells them, old man,” said Mitral, proudly.  “He wants La Billardiere’s place, and in order to get it, we must seize—­”

“Seize!  You’ll never be anything but a sheriff’s officer,” put in Metivier, striking Mitral amicably on the shoulder; “I like that, I do!”

“Seize Monsieur Clement des Lupeaulx in our clutches,” continued Mitral; “Elisabeth has discovered how to do it, and he is—­”