nt clearly is over-sanguine. It is
not less than a miracle of absurdity that he imagined: that he, weighted
down with his infamous murderings of scores of innocent old women, had
even a chance the most meagre of realizing his ridiculous aspirations of
Madame Jolicoeur's hand!" Snatching up her bottle and making for the
door, without any restraint whatever she added: "Monsieur and his
aspirations are a tragedy of stupidity--and equally are abounding in all
the materials for a farce at the Palais de Cristal!"

Monsieur Brisson was cut off from opportunity to reply to this outburst
by Madame Jouval's abrupt departure. His loss of opportunity had its
advantages. An adequate reply to her discharge of such a volley of home
truths would have been difficult to frame.

* * * * *

In the Vic bakery, between Madame Vic and Monsieur Fromagin, a
discussion was in hand akin to that carried on between Monsieur Brisson
and Madame Jouval--but marked with a somewhat nearer approach to
accuracy in detail. Being sequent to the settlement of Monsieur
Fromagin's monthly bill--always a matter of nettling dispute--it
naturally tended to develop its own asperities.

"They say," observed Monsieur Fromagin, "that the cat--it was among his
many tricks--had the habitude to jump on Madame Jolicoeur's head when,
for that purpose, she covered it with a night-cap. The use of the cat's
claws on such a covering, and, also, her hair being very abundant--"

"_Very_ abundant!" interjected Madame Vic; and added: "She, she is of a
richness to buy wigs by the scores!"

"It was his custom, I say," continued Monsieur Fromagin with insistence,
"to steady himself after his leap by using lightly his claws. His
illusion in regard to the bald head of the Notary, it would seem, led to
the catastrophe. Using his claws at first lightly, according to his
habit, he went on to use them with a truly savage energy--when he found
himself as on ice on that slippery eminence and verging to a fall."

"They say that his scalp was peeled away in strips and strings!" said
Madame Vic. "And all the while that woman and that reprobate of a Major
standing by in shrieks and roars of laughter--never raising a hand to
save him from the beast's ferocities! The poor man has my sympathies.
He, at least, in all his doings--I do not for a moment believe the story
that he caused the cat to be stolen--observed rigidly the convenances:
so recklessly shattered