Madelaine colored with anger, and exclaimed: "Do you dare to talk to me of your Marquis, of your Monsieur le Charmant, of that sharper, who has owed us three hundred livres for more than a year, and from whom you have never got the first red cent?"
"And yet, ma'am, you wish the custom of such gentlemen!"
"I wish the custom of gentlemen who pay, and not of knaves who only walk the streets of Paris, with swords at their sides, and hats cocked awry, to dupe imbeciles like you,—poor trades-people like us."
The tailor raised his hands towards heaven.
"It is easy to see, Madelaine, that you are no better acquainted with the Marquis than with the Grand Turk. . . . He, a knave; he, a sharper; he—poor young man—so mild, so gentle, so sad, and then so pretty . . . one could spend an hour only in looking at him . . . he is like a wax saint."
"So pretty—so pretty," said the housewife, imitating her husband, ". . . and what does that amount to? Did any one ever see such folly? Does he pay us any better because he is pretty? Once more, what good has it done you?"
"This is what it does for me: when I see such a handsome gentleman, poor and unhappy . . . I am heart-broken, and I have not the courage to ask for my money. . . . That is what it does for me. In short, Martin Kraft himself has felt as I do. . . . You sent him to the house of the Marquis to dun him, and what did Martin Kraft tell you when he came back? That instead of demanding the money, he had asked him if he did not need a new coat."
"That only proves that Martin Kraft is a goose like yourself!"
"The fact is, that this gentleman was so beautiful that one would have said he was a wooden figure painted at Nuremburg," gravely said the German, who could find no more artistic comparison to express his admiration.
"Well done!" said Dame Landry, contemptuously shrugging her shoulders; then adding, "but patience, patience! this very day I will go and show this charming gentleman that Madelaine Landry does not take her pay in wheedling."