Her mother, however, blocked the doorway, and would not let her pass, while La Normande seized her from behind, and then, Mademoiselle Saget coming to the assistance of the other two, the three of them dragged Claire into her bedroom and locked the door upon her, in spite of all her frantic resistance.  In her rage she tried to kick the door down, and smashed everything in the room.  Soon afterwards, however, nothing could be heard except a furious scratching, the sound of metal scarping at the plaster.  The girl was trying to loosen the door hinges with the points of her scissors.

“She would have murdered me if she had had a knife,” said La Normande, looking about for her clothes, in order to dress herself.  “She’ll be doing something dreadful, you’ll see, one of these days, with that jealousy of hers!  We mustn’t let her get out on any account:  she’d bring the whole neighbourhood down upon us!”

Mademoiselle Saget went off in all haste.  She reached the corner of the Rue Pirouette just as the commissary of police was re-entering the side passage of the Quenu-Gradelles’ house.  She grasped the situation at once, and entered the shop with such glistening eyes that Lisa enjoined silence by a gesture which called her attention to the presence of Quenu, who was hanging up some pieces of salt pork.  As soon as he had returned to the kitchen, the old maid in a low voice described the scenes that had just taken place at the Mehudins’.  Lisa, as she bent over the counter, with her hand resting on a dish of larded veal, listened to her with the happy face of one who triumphs.  Then, as a customer entered the shop, and asked for a couple of pig’s trotters, Lisa wrapped them up, and handed them over with a thoughtful air.

“For my own part, I bear La Normande no ill-will,” she said to Mademoiselle Saget, when they were alone again.  “I used to be very fond of her, and have always been sorry that other people made mischief between us.  The proof that I’ve no animosity against her is here in this photograph, which I saved from falling into the hands of the police, and which I’m quite ready to give her back if she will come and ask me for it herself.”

She took the photograph out of her pocket as she spoke.  Mademoiselle Saget scrutinised it and sniggered as she read the inscription, “Louise, to her dear friend Florent.”

“I’m not sure you’ll be acting wisely,” she said in her cutting voice.  “You’d do better to keep it.”

“No, no,” replied Lisa; “I’m anxious for all this silly nonsense to come to an end.  To-day is the day of reconciliation.  We’ve had enough unpleasantness, and the neighbourhood’s now going to be quiet and peaceful again.”

“Well, well, shall I go and tell La Normande that you are expecting her?” asked the old maid.

“Yes; I shall be very glad if you will.”