"The abominable history of Leroi de Valine, condemned to death at the age
of sixteen for having poisoned his entire family!"

Continually crying her wares, the drunken, staggering woman approached
the crowd, and striking out right and left with fists and elbows, forced
her way to Derues.

"Ah! ah!" said she, after looking him well over, "is it you, my gossip
Derues! Have you again a little affair on hand like the one when you set
fire to your shop in the rue Saint-Victor?"

Derues recognised the hawker who had abused him on the threshold of his
shop some years previously, and whom he had never seen since. "Yes, yes,"
she continued, "you had better look at me with your little round cat's
eyes. Are you going to say you don't know me?"

Derues appealed to his creditor. "You see," he said, "to what insults
you are exposing me. I do not know this woman who abuses me."

"What!--you don't know me! You who accused me of being a thief! But
luckily the Maniffets have been known in Paris as honest people for
generations, while as for you----"

"Sir," said Derues, "this case contains valuable wine which I am
commissioned to sell. To-morrow I shall receive the money for it;
to-morrow, in the course of the day, I will pay what I owe you. But I am
waited for now, do not in Heaven's name detain me longer, and thus
deprive me of the means of paying at all."

"Don't believe him, my good man," said the hawker; "lying comes natural