"Hey! gold has its value, especially to us who are old offenders and likely to leave our heads on the place du Bouffai. With my share, that is, twenty-five thousand francs, I can get away and live elsewhere."
"You shall do as you like. But come! tell me exactly where your pair are to meet; it is important not to miss them."
"At the inn of Saint-Philbert."
"Then that's all right. Isn't that inn kept by your sister-in-law, or pretty nearly? She shall have her share; it will be in the family."
"Oh, no, no!" cried Joseph. "In the first place she is not one of ours; and besides, she doesn't speak to me since--"
"Since what?"
"My brother's death, there! since you force me to tell you."
"Ah, ha! so it was true, what they said, that if you did not strike the blow, you at least held the candle?"
"Who said that,--who said that?" shouted Joseph Picaut. "Name him, Maître Jacques, and I'll hack him into pieces like that stool!" And suiting the action to the word, he dashed the stool on which he was sitting to the stone hearth and shivered it to fragments.
"Quiet! quiet!" said Maître Jacques; "what's all that to me? You know I never meddle in family affairs. Come back to our own business. You were saying?"