Mercadet
I know that.

Pierquin
I now offer you a thousand crowns for them.

Mercadet That is either too much or too little!  Anything for which you will give that sum must be worth infinitely more.  Some one is waiting for me in the other room.  I will bid you good-evening.

Pierquin
I will give you four thousand francs.

Mercadet
No!

Pierquin
Five—­six thousand.

Mercadet
If you wish to play cards, keep to the gambling table.  Why do you wish
to recover this paper?

Pierquin
Michonnin has insulted me.  I wish to take vengeance on him; to send
him to jail.

Mercadet (rising)
Six thousand francs worth of vengeance!  You are not a man to indulge
in luxuries of that kind.

Pierquin
I assure you—­

Mercadet Come, now, my friend, consider that for a satisfactory defamation of character the code won’t charge you more than five or six hundred francs, and the tax on a blow is only fifty francs—­

Pierquin
I swear to you—­

Mercadet Has this Michonnin come into a legacy?  And are the forty-seven thousand francs of these vouchers actually worth forty-seven thousand francs?  You should post me on this subject and then we’ll cry halves!

Pierquin
Very well, I agree.  The fact of it is, Michonnin is to be married.

Mercadet
What next!  And with whom, pray?

Pierquin
With the daughter of some nabob—­an idiot who is giving her an
enormous dowry.

Mercadet
Where does Michonnin live?

Pierquin Do you want to issue a writ?  He is without a fixed abode in Paris.  His furniture is held under the name of a friend; but his legal domicile must be in the neighborhood of Bordeaux, in the village of Ermont.

Mercadet
Stay a while.  I have some one here from that region.  I can get exact
information in a moment—­and then we can begin proceedings.

Pierquin
Send me the paper, and leave the business to me—­

Mercadet I shall be very glad to do so.  They shall be put into your hands in return for a signed agreement as to the sharing of the money.  I am at present altogether taken up with the marriage of my daughter.

Pierquin
I hope everything is going on well.

Mercadet Wonderfully well.  My son-in-law is a gentleman and, in spite of that, he is rich.  And, although both rich and a gentleman, he is clever into the bargain.

Pierquin
I congratulate you.

Mercadet
One word with you before you go.  You said, Michonnin, of Ermont, in
the neighborhood of Bordeaux?

Pierquin Yes, he has an old aunt somewhere about there!  A good woman called Bourdillac, who scrapes along on some six hundred francs a year, but to whom he gives the title of Marchioness of Bourdillac.  He pretends that her health is delicate and that she has a yearly income of forty thousand francs.