"It is strange, monsieur," she went on, "what fancies one takes into one's head! You'll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher's quarter.
I once lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his name was the same as yours--""What does my business signify to you?" interrupted Godefroid.
"Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn't tell me; I shall know it all the same," retorted Vauthier."There's Monsieur Bernard, for instance, for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters.What did he gain by concealing it, I ask you.If he had told me I'd have said nothing about it--so there!""I am not yet a publisher's clerk, but I expect to be," said Godefroid.
"I thought so!" exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room."You have come here to cut the ground from under the feet of--Good! /a man warned/ is a man armed.""Stop!" cried Godefroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the door."Look here, what interest have you in the matter?""Gracious!" said the old woman, eyeing Godefroid cautiously, "you're a bold one, anyhow."She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back and sat down on a chair beside the fire.
"On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard.