"It was a troublesome marquis who ventured home one night by a short cut. He was one of the fellows who does not believe in the necessity of a poor man living. He saw a fire of ours in the waste, and what does he do but ride up and over us. Luckily there is no blood on the waistcoat."
Madame's smile expanded. She looked the article over, picked the seed-pearls and lace with her little skinny hands, turned out the pockets, and inspected the flower-pattern of the silk.
Gougeon held the glittering _soleil_ fast in his hands. He could not keep his scowling eyes off it. Hache took up the bottle from the floor, and poured some wine into the chalice, whence he drank it off. Madame lifted the dress-coat, and inspected it with the same feminine closeness as the vest.
"You have not seen all," vivaciously replied the Admiral, and diving his hand into the box he drew forth and opened the black kerchief of the cave of Fontainebleau. Gougeon's hand snatched the watch of the Prince de Poix. Hache caught up the chalice, and executed a jig round the room while drinking it empty; and Madame arranged her neck to great self-satisfaction with Cyrène's necklace, while the Admiral told with no small exaggeration the story connected with the plunder.
"This brings us," he continued, "to the object of my coming. Bec, Caron, and la Tour, the three taken in the cave, are now in Paris imprisoned in the Little Châtelet. What can be done for them?"
"Be still," enjoined his wife, flashing her eyes at him.
"Were it I, I would go to the galleys and get away just as I did before," exclaimed Hache.
"Not so good as yours, wife Gougeon, I admit; but I escaped from the galleys."
"To force the guards is impossible," said she speculating. "Who are the witnesses?"
"He will not appear in the matter. It is not like your provincial tribunals."
"Granted; but another remains, a bad one."
"The aristocrat who fell into the cave. He is near us."
"I will do what I can. We shall see what the Galley is good for in Paris."
That evening there was a ball on the flat above. It was refreshingly democratic. The rag-pickers who lodged with Madame Gougeon and laid the foundation of her iron business, attended. Thither thronged the beggars, the knife-grinders, the old-bottle collectors of the neighbouring rookeries. The crookedest men of Paris, the most hideous women, the squalidest tatters were on hand. They whirled and jumped furiously in their unwashed feet; they became almost invisible in the clouds of dust; the odour sickened, the screeching and jumping deafened one. Bad, but maddening, wine was drunk in torrents. A man would kick his partner and the combatants tumble over each other in the midst of an applauding circle.