"Show me the document which makes the house yours!" cried Jean.
"Documents, indeed! It's quite sufficient that we have the right to it!"
"Very well, then, if you've the right to it, why don't you come and enforce your right with the bailiff and the gendarmes, as we did?"
"We want no bailiffs and gendarmes! It's only swindling scoundrels who have to go to them for help. An honest man can manage his affairs for himself."
Jean was bending over the table and clinging to it. He had resolved not to leave, bent on proving that he was the stronger of the two, and determined not to part with the house where his wife had just died, and where, it seemed to him, the only happy part of his life had been spent. Buteau, at the other side of the table, was also determined not to give up the house which he had just reconquered, and he resolved to bring the matter to a speedy issue.
"The long and the short of it," he cried, "is that we've had enough of you."
Then he rushed round the table at Jean, but the latter, catching hold of a chair and hurling it at his adversary's legs, tripped him up; then, as he was about to take refuge in the adjoining room, meaning to barricade himself inside it, Lise suddenly bethought herself of the money, the hundred and twenty-seven francs which she had observed in the drawer. Fancying that Jean was hastening to secure them, she rushed on before him and pulled the drawer open. At once she burst into a howl of angry disappointment.
"The money's gone! The cursed scamp has stolen the money during the night!"
It was all over with Jean now that the onslaught was directed against his pockets. He cried out that the money belonged to him, and that he would go into a full account of everything, and that they would owe him money in addition to this cash. But the Buteaus would not listen to him, and Lise rushed upon him, pummelling him even more violently than her husband. He was dislodged from the room by a furious onset, and hustled back into the kitchen, round which the three of them wildly revolved, writhing and struggling together in confusion, and dashing against the furniture in their gyrations. By dint of kicking, Jean managed to rid himself of Lise. She soon fell upon him again, however, and dug her nails into his neck, while Buteau, making a vigorous spring, threw him flat on the road outside. Then blocking up the door, the husband and wife bellowed out:
"You thief! you've stolen our money! You thief! you thief!"