“I pray and beseech you for it! I want it!”
And with that he fixed his eyes on him. The young man read menaces in that darkling gaze and suddenly gave way with a splutter of confused phrases:
“Do what you like—I don’t care a pin about it. Yes, yes, you’re abusing your power, but you’ll see, you’ll see!”
At this the embarrassment of both increased. Fauchery was leaning up against a set of shelves and was tapping nervously on the ground with his foot. Muffat seemed busy examining the eggcup, which he was still turning round and about.
“It’s an eggcup,” Bordenave obligingly came and remarked.
“Yes, to be sure! It’s an eggcup,” the count repeated.
“Excuse me, you’re covered with dust,” continued the manager, putting the thing back on a shelf. “If one had to dust every day there’d be no end to it, you understand. But it’s hardly clean here—a filthy mess, eh? Yet you may believe me or not when I tell you there’s money in it. Now look, just look at all that!”
He walked Muffat round in front of the pigeonholes and shelves and in the greenish light which filtered through the courtyard, told him the names of different properties, for he was anxious to interest him in his marine-stores inventory, as he jocosely termed it.
Presently, when they had returned into Fauchery’s neighborhood, he said carelessly enough:
“Listen, since we’re all of one mind, we’ll finish the matter at once. Here’s Mignon, just when he’s wanted.”