"I am sure it is for a work agreeable to God."

"Hold your tongue!"

"You enchant me!" cried the bourgeois, stretching out a long arm over
the balcony and seizing the hand of the dealer.

"Then who the devil are you?" cried he, who felt his hand held as if in
a vise.

"I am Robert Briquet, the terror of schismatics, the friend of the
Union, and a fierce Catholic; and you are not Nicholas Gimbelot, the
currier."

"No, no! good-by."

"What! are you going?"

"Yes!" and he ran off.

But Robert Briquet was not a man to be foiled; he jumped from his
balcony and ran after him.

"You are mad!" said he. "If I were your enemy, I have but to cry out,
and the watch is in the next street; but you are my friend, and now I
know your name. You are Nicholas Poulain, lieutenant to the provost of
Paris. I knew it was Nicholas something."

"I am lost!" murmured the man.