"A complaint, I expect?" replied the veteran. "Ah! yes; we have been
hard on Mariette. What would you have? I don't know the why and
wherefore of it yet.--But if you want satisfaction, I am ready for
you," he added, glancing at a collection of small arms and foils
stacked in a corner, the armory of the modern warrior.
"That was still further from my intention, sir. I have come to speak
to the editor."
"Nobody is ever here before four o'clock."
"Look you here, Giroudeau, old chap," remarked a voice, "I make it
eleven columns; eleven columns at five francs apiece is fifty-five
francs, and I have only been paid forty; so you owe me another fifteen
francs, as I have been telling you."
These words proceeded from a little weasel-face, pallid and
semi-transparent as the half-boiled white of an egg; two slits of eyes
looked out of it, mild blue in tint, but appallingly malignant in
expression; and the owner, an insignificant young man, was completely
hidden by the veteran's opaque person. It was a blood-curdling voice,
a sound between the mewing of a cat and the wheezy chokings of a
hyena.
"Yes, yes, my little militiaman," retorted he of the medal, "but you
are counting the headings and white lines. I have Finot's instructions
to add up the totals of the lines, and to divide them by the proper
number for each column; and after I performed that concentrating
operation on your copy, there were three columns less.
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