"You saw! Who are you?—a beggar—a beast—a foul offspring of sin. You dared to show them to him, I will warrant?"
"I showed him that they were not good."
"And gave him back the two sous?"
"I took seven sous for what were good. I took nothing for the rotten ones."
"Wretch! you dare to tell me that!"
A smile careless and sarcastic curled her mouth; her eyes looked at him with all their boldest fiercest luster.
"I never steal—not even from you, good Flamma."
"You have stolen now!" he shrieked, his thin and feeble voice rising in fury at his lost coins and his discovered treachery. "It is a lie that the figs were rotten; it is a lie that you took but seven sous. You stole the two sous to buy you bread and honey in the streets, or to get a drink at the wineshops. I know you; I know you; it is a devil's device to please your gluttonous appetite. The figs rotten!—not so rotten as is your soul would they be, though they were black as night and though they stunk as river mud! Go back to Denis Florian and bring me the two sous, or I will thrash you as a thief."
She laughed a hard, scornful, reckless laughter.
"You can thrash me; you cannot make me a thief."