Several more minutes passed. A very fine rain began to fall. Albert, Célestin, and Mouillot were about to desert their posts, when shouts of: "Murder! police! help!" arose in the middle of the square.
The three young men ran toward the place from which the cries came, and found Balivan holding a short man by the arm.
"It's no use for you to yell," he was saying; "you owe me five hundred francs for this olive!"
"What in the devil are you doing, you fool?" cried Mouillot; "let the gentleman alone, will you! It isn't Tobie!"
The man whom Balivan had seized was a respectable bourgeois, who was loitering about in front of the Opéra-Comique, intending to buy a check and see the last play.
Balivan confounded himself in apologies. But the bourgeois, who had had a horrible fright, continued to shout. The soldiers who were on guard at the theatre came up, with several policemen, and a crowd soon assembled. The young men were surrounded, and the man whom Balivan had attacked pointed them out to the soldiers, saying in a voice rendered almost inaudible by terror:
"Arrest those four men. They're all thieves; they tried to rob me of five hundred francs, and I had only forty sous about me! This one threatened me; he tried to murder me with an olive. Arrest all four."
The young men tried to explain to the soldiers that it was all the result of a jest. But the officers took them away, saying:
"You may explain at the station."
"That miserable Tobie!" muttered Mouillot; "a nice mess he's got us into with his olives!"