n? It's twenty
sous."

"Ah, true, such good news is worth a sum on which we exist for two
days," said Madame de Fermont, with a bitter smile, laying the letter
down on her daughter's bed, and going towards an old trunk without a
lock, to which she stooped down and opened. "We are robbed!" exclaimed
the unhappy woman, with alarm. "Nothing--not a sou left!" she added, in
a mournful voice; and, overwhelmed, she supported herself on the trunk.

"What do you say, mamma,--the bag with the money in it?"

But Madame de Fermont, rising suddenly, opened the room door, and,
addressing the receiver, who was on the landing-place:

"Sir," she said, whilst her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed
with indignation and alarm, "I had a bag of silver in this trunk; it was
stolen from me, no doubt, the day before yesterday, when I went out for
an hour with my daughter. The money must be restored, I tell you,--you
are responsible for it!"

"You've been robbed! That's false, I know. My house is respectable,"
said the fellow, in an insolent and brutal tone; "you only say that in
order not to pay me my postage and commission."

"I tell you, sir, that this money was all I possessed in the world; it
has been stolen from me, and I must have it found and restored, or I
will lodge an information. Oh, I will conceal nothing--I will respect
nothing--I tell you!"

"Very fine, indeed! You who have got no papers. Go and lay your
information,--go at once. Why don't you? I defy you, I do!"

The wretched woman was thunderstruck. She could not go out and leave
her daughter alone, confined to her bed as she was by the fright the
Gros-Boiteux had occasioned her in the morning, and particularly after
the threats with which the receiver of stolen goods had menaced her. He
added:

"This is a fudge! You'd as much a bag of silver there as a bag of gold.
Will you pay me for the letter,--will you or won't you? Well, it's just
the same to me. When you go by my door, I'll snatch off your old black
shawl from your shoulders. It's a precious shabby one; but I daresay I
can make twenty sous out of it."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed Madame de Fermont, bursting into tears, "I beseech
you have pity upon us! This small sum is all we possess, my daughter and
I, and, that stolen, we have nothing left--nothing--I say nothing,
but--to die of starvation!"

"What can I do? If it's true that you have been robbed, and of silver,
too (which appears to me very unlikely), w