“And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the firm,” I retorted. “Give me that bracelet and you shall have your money back.”
“I can’t,” he blurted out desperately.
“How do you mean, you can’t?” I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart. “You haven’t lost it, have you?”
“Worse!” he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that one moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake, but as strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in on one another. He hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of injurious name he could think of, and I had need of all my strength to ward off his attacks.
For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels outside the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so frequent these days that the police did not trouble much about them. But after a while Theodore became so violent that I was forced to call vigorously for help. I thought he meant to murder me. People came rushing out of the tavern, and someone very officiously started whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of bringing Theodore to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd had had time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in apparent amity side by side down the street.
But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined himself to gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other he grasped one of the buttons of my coat.
“That five francs,” he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. “I must have that five francs! Can’t you see that I can’t have that bracelet till I have my five francs wherewith to redeem it?”
“To redeem it!” I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by the arm, for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss which had opened at my feet.
“Yes,” said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great distance and through cotton-wool,