"But I tell you I'm going straight ahead to take this box."
"Where?"
"I won't tell you."
"I'll make you tell me! What's in the box? explosive stuff, perhaps? If you won't answer, I'll take you and your box before the magistrate."
The concierge seized the boy's arm; he struggled and wept, and shouted at the top of his lungs:
"Let me be—you big thief! Monsieur Renardin, your neighbor, sent me here, and I'll tell him that you wouldn't let me do my errand!"
Mademoiselle Arthémise, the old bachelor's servant, crossed the courtyard at that moment. Hearing her master's name, she stopped short, then ran to the messenger.
"Monsieur Renardin!" she cried; "who wants Monsieur Renardin? This little fellow?—What do you want of him?"
"Why, no, he doesn't want him; he says that he comes here from him," said the concierge; "if the little donkey had only said that at first, I'd have let him pass."
"From him—he comes from him? Then it's me he wants. Monsieur Renardin must have sent him to me. What do you want of me, my boy?"