"Especially," she replied, in a loud one, "if Gaubertin and you, my
love, help him."

"There! didn't I tell you so?" cried Guerbet, poking the justice of
the peace. "I knew he would find some pretty girl at Socquard's,
--there he is, putting her into his carriage."

"You are quite wrong, gentlemen," said Madame Soudry; "Monsieur Rigou
is thinking of nothing but the great affair; and if I'm not mistaken,
that girl is only Tonsard's daughter."

"He is like the chemist who lays in a stock of vipers," said old
Guerbet.

"One would think you were intimate with Monsieur Vermut to hear you
talk," said the doctor, pointing to the little apothecary, who was
then crossing the square.

"Poor fellow!" said the poet, who was suspected of occasionally
sharpening his wit with Madame Vermut; "just look at that waddle of
his! and they say he is learned!"

"Without him," said the justice of the peace, "we should be hard put
to it about post-mortems; he found poison in poor Pigeron's stomach so
cleverly that the chemists of Paris testified in the court at Auxerre
that they couldn't have done better--"

"He didn't find anything at all," said Soudry; "but, as President
Gendrin says, it is a good thing to let people suppose that poison
will always be found--"