n for a minute,
shut up. Many a time had he supplied the means to pay a milliner's bill,
or a dressmaker's, or to re-paper the walls, and after all no account
had been settled and no purchase made. All the money had gone to that
Charybdis in the Rue Fortuny. He had had enough of it, and was not going
to be caught again. He rounded his back, fixed his eyes upon the huge
slice of Auvergne cheese which filled his plate, and said no more.

Madame Astier was familiar with this dogged silence. This attitude of
passive resistance, dead as a ball of cotton, was always put on when
money was mentioned. But this time she was resolved to make him answer.
'Ah,' she said, 'I see you rolling up, Master Hedgehog. I know the
meaning of that. "Nothing to be got! nothing to be got! No, no, no!"
Eh?' The back grew rounder and rounder. 'But you can find money for M.
Fage.' Astier started, sat up, and looked uneasily at his wife. Money
for M. Fage? What did she mean?' Why, of course,' she went on, delighted
to have forced the barrier of his silence, 'of course it takes money to
do all that binding. And what's the good of it, I should like to know,
for all those old scraps?'

He felt relieved; evidently she knew nothing; it was only a chance shot.

But the term 'old scraps' went to his heart: unique autograph documents,
signed letters of Richelieu, Colbert, Newton, Galileo, Pascal, marvels
bought for an old song, and worth a fortune. 'Yes, madam, a fortune.' He
grew excited, and began to quote figures, the offers that had been
made him. Bos, the famous Bos of the Rue de l'Abbaye (and he knew his
business if any one did), Bos had offered him eight hundred pounds
merely for three specimens from his collection--three letters from
Charles the Fifth to Francois Rabelais. Old scraps indeed!

Madame Astier listened in utter amazement. She was well aware that for
the last two or three years he had been collecting old manuscripts.
He used sometimes to speak to her of his finds, and she listened in a
wandering absent-minded way, as a woman does listen to a man's voice
when she has heard it for thirty years. But this was beyond her
conception. Eight hundred pounds for three letters! And why did he not
take it?'

He burst out like an explosion of dynamite.

'Sell my Charles the Fifths! Never! I would see you all without bread
and begging from door to door before I would touch them--understand
that!' He struck the table. His face was very pale, and