“Ah, the villain! Ah, the scoundrel! He came and told me himself he was a deputy-mayor,—a trumped-up story! Reprobate! is that what he calls business? There is no honor among mayors; the government deceives us. Stop! I’ll go and make him pay me; I will—”
“Hey! at such times everybody looks out for himself, my dear!” said Gigonnet, lifting his leg with the quaint little action of a cat fearing to cross a wet place,—a habit to which he owed his nickname. “There are some very big wigs in the matter who mean to get themselves out of the scrape.”
“Yes, and I’ll pull my nuts out of the fire, too! Marie-Jeanne, bring my clogs and my rabbit-skin cloak; and quick, too, or I’ll warm you up with a box on the ear.”
“There’ll be warm work down there!” thought Gigonnet, rubbing his hands as he walked away. “Du Tillet will be satisfied; it will make a fine scandal all through the quarter. I don’t know what that poor devil of a perfumer has done to him; for my part I pity the fellow as I do a dog with a broken leg. He isn’t a man, he has got no force.”
Madame Madou bore down, like an insurrectionary wave from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, upon the shop-door of the hapless Birotteau, which she opened with excessive violence, for her walk had increased her fury.
“Heap of vermin! I want my money; I will have my money! You shall give me my money, or I carry off your scent-bags, and that satin trumpery, and the fans, and everything you’ve got here, for my two thousand francs. Who ever heard of mayors robbing the people? If you don’t pay me I’ll send you to the galleys; I’ll go to the police,—justice shall be done! I won’t leave this place till I’ve got my money.”
She made a gesture as if to break the glass before the shelves on which the valuables were placed.
“Mother Madou takes a drop too much,” whispered Celestin to his neighbor.
The virago overheard him,—for in paroxysms of passion the organs are either paralyzed or trebly acute,—and she forthwith applied to Celestin’s ear the most vigorous blow that ever resounded in a Parisian perfumery.
“Learn to respect women, my angel,” she said, “and don’t smirch the names of the people you rob.”