anonymous scribbler in the _Plume_ seeks to pick a quarrel
with me on the subject of an old woman whom he states was
arrested by an _agent des moeurs_, which fact I deny. I have
myself seen Madame Aubert--who is at least sixty years of
age--and she told me in detail her quarrel with the butcher
over the weighing of some chops, which led to an explanation
before the commissary of police. This is the whole truth. As to
the other insinuations of the writer in the _Plume_, I despise
them. Besides, a man does not reply to such things when they
are written under a mask.

"GEORGE DUROY."

Monsieur Walter and Jacques Rival, who had come in, thought this note
satisfactory, and it was settled that it should go in at once.

Duroy went home early, somewhat agitated and slightly uneasy. What reply
would the other man make? Who was he? Why this brutal attack? With the
brusque manners of journalists this affair might go very far. He slept
badly. When he read his reply in the paper next morning, it seemed to
him more aggressive in print than in manuscript. He might, it seemed to
him, have softened certain phrases. He felt feverish all day, and slept
badly again at night. He rose at dawn to get the number of the _Plume_
that must contain a reply to him.

The weather had turned cold again, it was freezing hard. The gutters,
frozen while still flowing, showed like two ribbons of ice alongside the
pavement. The morning papers had not yet come in, and Duroy recalled the
day of his first article, "The Recollections of a Chasseur d'Afrique."
His hands and feet getting numbed, grew painful, especially the tips of
his fingers, and he began to trot round the glazed kiosque in which the
newspaper seller, squatting over her foot warmer, only showed through
the little window a red nose and a pair of cheeks to match in a woolen
hood. At length the newspaper porter passed the expected parcel through
the opening, and the woman held out to Duroy an unfolded copy of the
_Plume_.

He glanced through it in search of his name, and at first saw nothing.
He was breathing again, when he saw between two dashes:

"Monsieur Duroy, of the _Vie Francaise_, contradicts us, and in
contradicting us, lies. He admits, however, that there is a
Madame Aubert, and that an agent took her before the commissary
of police. It only remains, therefore, to add two words, '_des
moeurs_,' after the w