“I have come,” she said, “to beg you, sir⁠—”

“What, madame? I am listening.”

And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin knew it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from whom he always got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was asked to make.

So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the bills, small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when, gathering together all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vinçart take in his own name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger with his fellow-citizens.