"He takes me for a thief!" exclaimed Passedix, addressing the witnesses of the scene. "I should find it very amusing, if I were not afraid that this clown would tear my cloak! Sandis! if he makes the slightest rent in it, I will make him pay for it!"
"He will make me pay for what is mine, what he stole from my own nephew!" exclaimed the shopkeeper. "Ah! you villain! you don't belie your reputation.—My friends, messieurs, mesdemoiselles, do you know who this man is? He is Giovanni! the celebrated Giovanni! the Italian robber who has been working Paris for a long while, and whom the police can never catch! Well! I have caught him, I have! And I promise you that I won't let him go.—It's a great capture! Help me take him to the guardhouse at the Châtelet; we shall render a great service to society!"
"Giovanni! Giovanni!" cried the bystanders. And one and all pushed and crowded and stood on tiptoe, trying to obtain a better view of the famous brigand of whom everyone was talking, and of whom stories were told that made women and children, and often husbands and brothers too, quake with fear.
"What! is that the Italian brigand?" said a bourgeois; "I have heard that he has a horrible face. This tall fellow makes me more inclined to laugh."
"I was told he is a handsome young man," said a corpulent matron; "this man is very ugly and he isn't young."
"He hasn't a surly look at all, this cavalier," said a tradesman; "are you quite sure, neighbor, that you are not mistaken?"
"Am I sure!" cried the dealer in clothes; "why, it's very easy to explain.—I intrusted to my nephew Plumard, a solicitor's clerk, the complete costume, orange silk, slashed with lemon, which this man is wearing. My nephew Plumard came back and told me, with tears in his eyes, that he had been attacked and robbed in Rue des Bourdonnais by the brigand Giovanni, dressed in the costume in which he is always seen.—Now, then, as this man is wearing the complete outfit that I intrusted to my nephew, he must be the man who stole it; and he must have been very glad to put on this costume, because he knows that the police have his description in the other."
"Yes, yes, he's Giovanni, he's the robber!" cried the crowd, inclined, like all crowds, to find a culprit.
"We must take him to the Châtelet; we mustn't let him escape. Let's take away his long sword!"
"Sandioux! you are cowards all!" shouted Passedix, drawing Roland from the scabbard, and trying to force his way through the multitude. "This old clothes man is a fool—I don't know him! The clothes I have on I paid for in honest crowns—thirty pistoles, do you hear?"