“Yes.”

“Good God!  You are going to fight!” she exclaimed, trying to seize him by the arm.  “You are going to fight!”

“Ah! if it were nothing worse than that!” said Quennebert, pacing up and down the room:  “but you need not be alarmed; it is only a money trouble.  I lent a large sum, a few months ago, to a friend, but the knave has run away and left me in the lurch.  It was trust money, and must be replaced within three days.  But where am I to get two thousand francs?”

“Yes, that is a large sum, and not easy to raise at such short notice.”

“I shall be obliged to have recourse to some Jew, who will drain me dry.  But I must save my good name at all costs.”

Madame Rapally gazed at him in consternation.  Maitre Quennebert, divining her thought, hastened to add—­

“I have just one-third of what is needed.”

“Only one-third?”

“With great care, and by scraping together all I possess, I can make up eight hundred livres.  But may I be damned in the next world, or punished as a swindler in this, and one’s as bad as the other to me, if I can raise one farthing more.”

“But suppose someone should lend you the twelve hundred francs, what then?”

“Pardieu!  I should accept them,” cried the notary as if he had not the least suspicion whom she could mean.  “Do you happen to know anyone, my dear Madame Rapally?”

The widow nodded affirmatively, at the same time giving him a passionate glance.

“Tell me quick the name of this delightful person, and I shall go to him to-morrow morning.  You don’t know what a service you are rendering me.  And I was so near not telling you of the fix I was in, lest you should torment yourself uselessly.  Tell me his name.”

“Can you not guess it?”

“How should I guess it?”

“Think well.  Does no one occur to you?”

“No, no one,” said Quennebert, with the utmost innocence.

“Have you no friends?”

“One or two.”

“Would they not be glad to help you?”

“They might.  But I have mentioned the matter to no one.”

“To no one?”

“Except you.”

“Well?”

“Well, Madame Rapally—­I hope I don’t understand you; it’s not possible; you would not humiliate me.  Come, come, it’s a riddle, and I am too stupid to solve it.  I give it up.  Don’t tantalise me any longer; tell me the name.”

The widow, somewhat abashed by this exhibition of delicacy on the part of Maitre Quennebert, blushed, cast down her eyes, and did not venture to speak.

As the silence lasted some time, it occurred to the notary that he had been perhaps too hasty in his supposition, and he began to cast round for the best means of retrieving his blunder.

“You do not speak,” he said; “I see it was all a joke.”

“No,” said the widow at last in a timid voice, “it was no joke; I was quite in earnest.  But the way you take things is not very encouraging.”