“Oh, I had never set eyes on him before that evening.”
“But he must have been in your establishment before?”
“Never in his life.”
“Oh, oh! Then how do you explain that on entering the shop while you were upstairs, this unknown person—this stranger—should have called out: ‘Here, old woman!’ Did he merely guess that the establishment was kept by a woman; and that this woman was no longer young?”
“He did not say that.”
“Reflect a moment; you, yourself just told me so.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that, I’m sure, my good sir.”
“Yes, you did, and I will prove it by having your evidence read. Goguet, read the passage, if you please.”
The smiling clerk looked back through his minutes and then, in his clearest voice, he read these words, taken down as they fell from the Widow Chupin’s lips: “I had been upstairs about half an hour, when I heard some one below call out ‘Eh! old woman.’ So I went down,” etc., etc.
“Are you convinced?” asked M. Segmuller.