“No one but you has touched my pocket! Give me back my twenty-thousand francs!⁠ ⁠… Give me back my twenty-thousand francs!⁠ ⁠…”

“On my soul,” sighed Moncharmin, who was ready to swoon, “on my soul, I swear that I haven’t got it!”

Then somebody knocked at the door. Moncharmin opened it automatically, seemed hardly to recognize Mercier, his business-manager, exchanged a few words with him, without knowing what he was saying and, with an unconscious movement, put the safety-pin, for which he had no further use, into the hands of his bewildered subordinate.⁠ ⁠…