Next morning early, a large and noisy crowd was assembled in the rue Saint-Victor before Derues’ shop of drugs and groceries.  There was a confusion of cross questions, of inquiries which obtained no answer, of answers not addressed to the inquiry, a medley of sound, a pell-mell of unconnected words, of affirmations, contradictions, and interrupted narrations.  Here, a group listened to an orator who held forth in his shirt sleeves, a little farther there were disputes, quarrels, exclamations of “Poor man!” “Such a good fellow!” “My poor gossip Derues!” “Good heavens! what will he do now?” “Alas! he is quite done for; it is to be hoped his creditors will give him time!” Above all this uproar was heard a voice, sharp and piercing like a cat’s, lamenting, and relating with sobs the terrible misfortune of last night.  At about three in the morning the inhabitants of the rue St. Victor had been startled out of their sleep by the cry of “Fire, fire!” A conflagration had burst forth in Derues’ cellar, and though its progress had been arrested and the house saved from destruction, all the goods stored therein had perished.  It apparently meant a considerable loss in barrels of oil, casks of brandy, boxes of soap, etc., which Derues estimated at not less than nine thousand livres.

By what unlucky chance the fire had been caused he had no idea.  He recounted his visit to Madame Legrand, and pale, trembling, hardly able to sustain himself, he cried—­

“I shall die of grief!  A poor man as ill as I am!  I am lost!  I am ruined!”

A harsh voice interrupted his lamentations, and drew the attention of the crowd to a woman carrying printed broadsides, and who forced a passage through the crowd up to the shop door.  She unfolded one of her sheets, and cried as loudly and distinctly as her husky voice permitted—­

“Sentence pronounced by the Parliament of Paris against John Robert Cassel, accused and convicted of Fraudulent Bankruptcy!”

Derues looked up and saw a street-hawker who used to come to his shop for a drink, and with whom he had had a violent quarrel about a month previously, she having detected him in a piece of knavery, and abused him roundly in her own style, which was not lacking in energy.  He had not seen her since.  The crowd generally, and all the gossips of the quarter, who held Derues in great veneration, thought that the woman’s cry was intended as an indirect insult, and threatened to punish her for this irreverence.  But, placing one hand on her hip, and with the other warning off the most pressing by a significant gesture—­

“Are you still befooled by his tricks, fools that you are?  Yes, no doubt there was a fire in the cellar last night, no doubt his creditors will be geese enough to let him off paying his debts!  But what you don’t know is, that he didn’t really lose by it at all!”

“He lost all his goods!” the crowd cried on all sides.  “More than nine thousand livres!  Oil and brandy, do you think those won’t burn?  The old witch, she drinks enough to know!  If one put a candle near her she would take fire, fast enough!”