“Keep a watch on Popinot,” said Gigonnet.

Roguin, in the parlance of such worthy merchants, was now the “unfortunate Roguin.”  Cesar had become “that wretched Birotteau.”  The one seemed to them excused by his great passion; the other they considered all the more guilty for his harmless pretensions.

Gigonnet, after leaving the Bourse, went round by the Rue Perrin-Gasselin on his way home, in search of Madame Madou, the vendor of dried fruits.

“Well, old woman,” he said, with his coarse good-humor, “how goes the business?”

“So-so,” said Madame Madou, respectfully, offering her only armchair to the usurer, with a show of attention she had never bestowed on her “dear defunct.”

Mother Madou, who would have floored a recalcitrant or too-familiar wagoner and gone fearlessly to the assault of the Tuileries on the 10th of October, who jeered her best customers and was capable of speaking up to the king in the name of her associate market-women, —­Angelique Madou received Gigonnet with abject respect.  Without strength in his presence, she shuddered under his rasping glance.  The lower classes will long tremble at sight of the executioner, and Gigonnet was the executioner of petty commerce.  In the markets no power on earth is so respected as that of the man who controls the flow of money; all other human institutions are as nothing beside him.  Justice herself takes the form of a commissioner, a familiar personage in the eyes of the market; but usury seated behind its green boxes, —­usury, entreated with fear tugging at the heart-strings, dries up all jesting, parches the throat, lowers the proudest look, and makes the commonest market women respectful.

“Do you want anything of me?” she said.

“A trifle, a mere nothing.  Hold yourself ready to make good those notes of Birotteau; the man has failed, and claims must be put in at once.  I will send you the account to-morrow morning.”

Madame Madou’s eyes contracted like those of a cat for a second, and then shot out flames.

“Ah, the villain!  Ah, the scoundrel!  He came and told me himself he was a deputy-mayor,—­a trumped-up story!  Reprobate! is that what he calls business?  There is no honor among mayors; the government deceives us.  Stop!  I’ll go and make him pay me; I will—­”

“Hey! at such times everybody looks out for himself, my dear!” said Gigonnet, lifting his leg with the quaint little action of a cat fearing to cross a wet place,—­a habit to which he owed his nickname.  “There are some very big wigs in the matter who mean to get themselves out of the scrape.”

“Yes, and I’ll pull my nuts out of the fire, too!  Marie-Jeanne, bring my clogs and my rabbit-skin cloak; and quick, too, or I’ll warm you up with a box on the ear.”

“There’ll be warm work down there!” thought Gigonnet, rubbing his hands as he walked away.  “Du Tillet will be satisfied; it will make a fine scandal all through the quarter.  I don’t know what that poor devil of a perfumer has done to him; for my part I pity the fellow as I do a dog with a broken leg.  He isn’t a man, he has got no force.”