Derues shuddered all over; he exhausted himself in protestations; but the other, almost beside himself, continued to shout.

“Oh!” he said, turning to the crowd, “all these tricks and grimaces and signs of the cross are no good.  I must have my money, and as I know what his promises are worth, I will pay myself!  Come, you knave, make haste.  Tell me what there is in that box; open it, or I will fetch the police.”

The crowd was divided between the creditor and debtor, and possibly a free fight would have begun, but the general attention was distracted by the arrival of another spectator.  A voice heard above all the tumult caused a score of heads to turn, it was the voice of a woman crying: 

“The abominable history of Leroi de Valine, condemned to death at the age of sixteen for having poisoned his entire family!”

Continually crying her wares, the drunken, staggering woman approached the crowd, and striking out right and left with fists and elbows, forced her way to Derues.

“Ah! ah!” said she, after looking him well over, “is it you, my gossip Derues!  Have you again a little affair on hand like the one when you set fire to your shop in the rue Saint-Victor?”

Derues recognised the hawker who had abused him on the threshold of his shop some years previously, and whom he had never seen since.  “Yes, yes,” she continued, “you had better look at me with your little round cat’s eyes.  Are you going to say you don’t know me?”

Derues appealed to his creditor.  “You see,” he said, “to what insults you are exposing me.  I do not know this woman who abuses me.”

“What!—­you don’t know me!  You who accused me of being a thief!  But luckily the Maniffets have been known in Paris as honest people for generations, while as for you——­”

“Sir,” said Derues, “this case contains valuable wine which I am commissioned to sell.  To-morrow I shall receive the money for it; to-morrow, in the course of the day, I will pay what I owe you.  But I am waited for now, do not in Heaven’s name detain me longer, and thus deprive me of the means of paying at all.”

“Don’t believe him, my good man,” said the hawker; “lying comes natural to him always.”

“Sir, I promise on my oath you shall be paid tomorrow; you had better trust the word of an honest man rather than the ravings of a drunken woman.”

The creditor still hesitated, but, another person now spoke in Derues’ favour; it was the carpenter Mouchy, who had inquired the cause of the quarrel.

“For God’s sake,” he exclaimed, “let the gentleman go on.  That chest came from my workshop, and I know there is wine inside it; he told my wife so two days ago.”

“Will you be surety for me, my friend?” asked Derues.

“Certainly I will; I have not known you for ten years in order to leave you in trouble and refuse to answer for you.  What the devil are respectable people to be stopped like this in a public place?  Come, sir, believe his word, as I do.”