Logre, however, was apparently furious.  To begin with he almost broke the pegs off in hanging up his hat and muffler.  Then he threw himself violently into a chair, and brought his fist down on the table, while tossing away the newspaper.

“Do you think I read their fearful lies?” he cried.

Then he gave vent to the anger raging within him.  “Did ever anyone hear,” he cried, “of masters making such fools of their people?  For two whole hours I’ve been waiting for my pay!  There were ten of us in the office kicking our heels there.  Then at last Monsieur Manoury arrived in a cab.  Where he had come from I don’t know, and don’t care, but I’m quite sure it wasn’t any respectable place.  Those salesmen are all a parcel of thieves and libertines!  And then, too, the hog actually gave me all my money in small change!”

Robine expressed his sympathy with Logre by the slight movement of his eyelids.  But suddenly the hunchback bethought him of a victim upon whom to pour out his wrath.  “Rose!  Rose!” he cried, stretching his head out of the little room.

The young woman quickly responded to the call, trembling all over.

“Well,” shouted Logre, “what do you stand staring at me like that for?  Much good that’ll do!  You saw me come in, didn’t you?  Why haven’t you brought me my glass of black coffee, then?”

Gavard ordered two similar glasses, and Rose made all haste to bring what was required, while Logre glared sternly at the glasses and little sugar trays as if studying them.  When he had taken a drink he seemed to grow somewhat calmer.

“But it’s Charvet who must be getting bored,” he said presently.  “He is waiting outside on the pavement for Clemence.”

Charvet, however, now made his appearance, followed by Clemence.  He was a tall, scraggy young man, carefully shaved, with a skinny nose and thin lips.  He lived in the Rue Vavin, behind the Luxembourg, and called himself a professor.  In politics he was a disciple of Hebert.[*] He wore his hair very long, and the collar and lapels of his threadbare frock-coat were broadly turned back.  Affecting the manner and speech of a member of the National Convention, he would pour out such a flood of bitter words and make such a haughty display of pedantic learning that he generally crushed his adversaries.  Gavard was afraid of him, though he would not confess it; still, in Charvet’s absence he would say that he really went too far.  Robine, for his part, expressed approval of everything with his eyes.  Logre sometimes opposed Charvet on the question of salaries; but the other was really the autocrat of the coterie, having the greatest fund of information and the most overbearing manner.  For more than ten years he and Clemence had lived together as man and wife, in accordance with a previously arranged contract, the terms of which were strictly observed by both parties to it.  Florent looked at the young woman with some little surprise, but at last he recollected where he had previously seen her.  This was at the fish auction.  She was, indeed, none other than the tall dark female clerk whom he had observed writing with outstretched fingers, after the manner of one who had been carefully instructed in the art of holding a pen.