“Who is that?” asked Madame Soudry, smirking.

“The Soulanges.”

“Ah, yes!” replied the queen after a pause.

“Here I am!” cried Madame Vermut, coming into the room; “and without my re-active,—­for Vermut is so inactive in all that concerns me that I can’t call him an active of any kind.”

“What the devil is that cursed old Rigou doing there?” said Soudry to Guerbet, as they saw the green chaise stop before the gate of the Tivoli.  “He is one of those tiger-cats whose every step has an object.”

“You may well say cursed,” replied the fat little collector.

“He has gone into the Cafe de la Paix,” remarked Gourdon, the doctor.

“And there’s some trouble there,” added Gourdon the poet; “I can hear them yelping from here.”

“That cafe,” said the abbe, “is like the temple of Janus; it was called the Cafe de la Guerre under the Empire, and then it was peace itself; the most respectable of the bourgeoisie met there for conversation—­”

“Conversation!” interrupted the justice of the peace.  “What kind of conversation was it which produced all the little Bourniers?”

“—­but ever since it has been called, in honor of the Bourbons, the Cafe de la Paix, fights take place there every day,” said Abbe Taupin, finishing the sentence which the magistrate had taken the liberty of interrupting.

This idea of the abbe was, like the quotations from “The Cup-and-Ball,” of frequent recurrence.

“Do you mean that Burgundy will always be the land of fisticuffs?” asked Pere Guerbet.

“That’s not ill said,” remarked the abbe; “not at all; in fact it’s almost an exact history of our country.”

“I don’t know anything about the history of France,” blurted Soudry; “and before I try to learn it, it is more important to me to know why old Rigou has gone into the Cafe de la Paix with Socquard.”

“Oh!” returned the abbe, “wherever he goes and wherever he stays, you may be quite certain it is for no charitable purpose.”

“That man gives me goose-flesh whenever I see him,” said Madame Vermut.

“He is so much to be feared,” remarked the doctor, “that if he had a spite against me I should have no peace till he was dead and buried; he would get out of his coffin to do you an ill-turn.”

“If any one can force the Shopman to come to the fair, and manage to catch him in a trap, it’ll be Rigou,” said Soudry to his wife, in a low tone.

“Especially,” she replied, in a loud one, “if Gaubertin and you, my love, help him.”

“There! didn’t I tell you so?” cried Guerbet, poking the justice of the peace.  “I knew he would find some pretty girl at Socquard’s, —­there he is, putting her into his carriage.”

“You are quite wrong, gentlemen,” said Madame Soudry; “Monsieur Rigou is thinking of nothing but the great affair; and if I’m not mistaken, that girl is only Tonsard’s daughter.”