your heels, and if you dare touch Desire you'll have to answer to
_me_,--you and your minx Ursula."

She rang the bell violently and called to the servants.

"Remember what I have said to you," repeated Savinien to Minoret, paying
no attention to Zelie's tirade. Suspending the sword of Damocles over
their heads, he left the room.

"Now, then, Minoret," said Zelie, "you will explain to me what this all
means. A young man doesn't rush into a house and make an uproar like
that and demand the blood of a family for nothing."

"It's some mischief of that vile Goupil," said the colossus. "I promised
to help him buy a practice if he would get me the Rouvre property cheap.
I gave him ten per cent on the cost, twenty thousand francs in a note,
and I suppose he isn't satisfied."

"Yes, but why did he get up those serenades and the scandals against
Ursula?"

"He wanted to marry her."

"A girl without a penny! the sly thing! Now Minoret, you are telling me
lies, and you are too much of a fool, my son, to make me believe them.
There is something under all this, and you are going to tell me what it
is."

"There's nothing."

"Nothing? I tell you you lie, and I shall find it out."

"Do let me alone!"

"I'll turn the faucet of that fountain of venom, Goupil--whom you're
afraid of--and we'll see who gets the best of it then."

"Just as you choose."

"I know very well it will be as I choose! and what I choose first and
foremost is that no harm shall come to Desire. If anything happens to
him, mark you, I'll do something that may send me to the scaffold--and
you, you haven't any feeling about him--"

A quarrel thus begun between Minoret and his wife was sure not to
end without a long and angry strife. So at the moment of his
self-satisfaction the foolish robber found his inward struggle against
himself and against Ursula revived by his own fault, and complicated
with a new and terrible adversary. The next day, when he left the house
early to find Goupil and try to appease him with additional money, the
walls were already placarded with the words: "Minoret is a thief." All
those whom he met commiserated him and asked him who was the author of
the anonymous placard. Fortunately for him, everybody made allowance for
his equivocal replies by reflecting on his utter stupidity; fools get
more advantage from their weakness than able men from their strength.
The world looks on at a great man battling against fate, and does not
he