All. “Yes, tell us.”
Fleury. “Colleville.”
Thuillier. “Why?”
Fleury. “Because Madame Colleville has taken the shortest way to it—through the sacristy.”
Thuillier. “I am too much Colleville’s friend not to beg you, Monsieur Fleury, to speak respectfully of his wife.”
Phellion. “A defenceless woman should never be made the subject of conversation here—”
Vimeux. “All the more because the charming Madame Colleville won’t invite Fleury to her house. He backbites her in revenge.”
Fleury. “She may not receive me on the same footing that she does Thuillier, but I go there—”
Thuillier. “When? how?—under her windows?”
Though Fleury was dreaded as a bully in all the offices, he received Thuillier’s speech in silence. This meekness, which surprised the other clerks, was owing to a certain note for two hundred francs, of doubtful value, which Thuillier agreed to pass over to his sister. After this skirmish dead silence prevailed. They all wrote steadily from one to three o’clock. Du Bruel did not return.