own property without being assaulted with a ton of paper? Who has dared
to throw such a thing from a window?"

"Monsieur," stammered the concierge, "I do not doubt that it was the
top-floor poet; he has been behaving like a lunatic for days."

"Aha, the top-floor poet?" snorted monsieur Gouge. "I shall soon
dispose of _him_!" And Tricotrin's tears were scarcely dried when
_bang_ came another knock at his door.

"So, monsieur," exclaimed the landlord, with fine satire, "your poems
are of small account, it appears, since you use them as missiles? The
value you put upon your scribbling does not encourage me to wait for my
rent!"

"Mine?" faltered Tricotrin, casting an indignant glance at the muddy
manuscript restored to him; "you accuse _me_ of having perpetrated
that atrocity? Oh, this is too much! I have a reputation to preserve,
monsieur, and I swear by all the Immortals that it was no work of
mine."

"Did you not throw it?"

"Throw it? Yes, assuredly I threw it. But I did not write it."

"Morbleu! what do I care who wrote it?" roared monsieur Gouge, purple
with spleen. "Does its authorship improve the condition of my hat? My
grievance is its arrival on my head, not its literary quality. Let me
tell you that you expose yourself to actions at law, pitching weights
like this from a respectable house into a public street."