“What does my business signify to you?” interrupted Godefroid.

“Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn’t tell me; I shall know it all the same,” retorted Vauthier.  “There’s Monsieur Bernard, for instance, for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters.  What did he gain by concealing it, I ask you.  If he had told me I’d have said nothing about it—­so there!”

“I am not yet a publisher’s clerk, but I expect to be,” said Godefroid.

“I thought so!” exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room.  “You have come here to cut the ground from under the feet of—­Good! a man warned is a man armed.”

“Stop!” cried Godefroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the door.  “Look here, what interest have you in the matter?”

“Gracious!” said the old woman, eyeing Godefroid cautiously, “you’re a bold one, anyhow.”

She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back and sat down on a chair beside the fire.

“On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard.  Ha! you’re a sly one; and what a play-actor!  I was so certain you were a ninny!  Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs?  As sure as the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me five hundred to keep my eyes open for them.”

“They! five hundred francs! nonsense!” cried Godefroid.  “I know their ways; two hundred is the very most, my good woman, and even that is only promised; you can’t assign it.  But I will say this:  if you will put me in the way to do the business they want to do with Monsieur Bernard I will pay you four hundred francs.  Now, then, how does the matter stand?”

“They have advanced fifteen hundred francs upon the work,” said Madame Vauthier, making no further effort at deception, “and the old man has signed an acknowledgment for three thousand.  They wouldn’t do it under a hundred per cent.  He thought he could easily pay them out of his book, but they have arranged to get the better of him there.  It was they who sent Cartier here, and the other creditors.”

Here Godefroid gave the old woman a glance of ironical intelligence, which showed her that he saw through the role she was playing in the interest of her proprietor.  Her words were, in fact, a double illumination to Godefroid; the curious scene between himself and the gardener was now explained.

“Well,” she resumed, “they have got him now.  Where is he to find three thousand francs?  They intend to offer him five hundred the day he puts the first volume of his book into their hands, and five hundred for each succeeding volume.  The affair isn’t in their names; they have put it into the hands of a publisher whom Barbet set up on the quai des Augustins.”