"A reporter."

"A reporter in your family, which always seemed so united! How can that
be?"

"One can almost say that the devil was at the bottom of it. You know my
nephew Joseph--"

"Little Joseph! Is he a reporter?"

"Yes."

"Little Joseph, I can see him in the park now, rolling a hoop,
bare-legged, with a broad white collar, not more than six or seven
years ago--and now he writes for newspapers!"

"Yes, newspapers! You know my brother keeps a pharmacy in the Rue
Montorgueil, an old and reliable firm, and naturally my brother said to
himself, 'After me, my son.' Joseph worked hard at chemistry, followed the
course of study, and had already passed an examination. The boy was steady
and industrious, and had a taste for the business. On Sundays for
recreation he made tinctures, prepared prescriptions, pasted the labels
and rolled pills. When, as misfortune would have it, a murder was
committed about twenty feet from my brother's pharmacy--"

"The murder of the Rue Montorgueil--that clerk who killed his sweetheart,
a little brewery maid?"

"The very same. Joseph was attracted by the cries, saw the murderer
arrested, and after the police were gone stayed there in the street,