“Hey! there’s honor for you! good measure and running over!” she cried with naive admiration. “Look here, my good monsieur, I am doing a fine trade with your little red-head. He’s a nice young fellow; he lets me earn a fair penny without haggling over it, so that I may get an equivalent for that loss. Well, I’ll get you a receipt in full, anyhow; you keep the money, my poor old man! La Madou may get in a fury, and she does scold; but she has got something here—” she cried, thumping the most voluminous mounds of flesh ever yet seen in the markets.
“No,” said Birotteau, “the law is plain. I wish to pay you in full.”
“Then I won’t deny you the pleasure,” she said; “and to-morrow I’ll trumpet your conduct through the markets. Ha! it’s rare, rare!”
The worthy man had much the same scene, with variations, at Lourdois the house painter’s, father-in-law of Crottat. It was raining; Cesar left his umbrella at the corner of the door. The prosperous painter, seeing the water trickling into the room where he was breakfasting with his wife, was not tender.
“Come, what do you want, my poor Pere Birotteau?” he said, in the hard tone which some people take to importunate beggars.
“Monsieur, has not your son-in-law told you—”
“What?” cried Lourdois, expecting some appeal.
“To be at his office this morning at half past eleven, and give me a receipt for the payment of your claims in full, with interest?”
“Ah, that’s another thing! Sit down, Monsieur Birotteau, and eat a mouthful with us.”
“Do us the pleasure to share our breakfast,” said Madame Lourdois.