Antoine thereupon shouted to her to hold her tongue, and continued, with increasing fury: "Two hundred francs! A fine thing! I want my due, ten thousand francs.

Ah! yes, talk of the hole they shoved me into like a dog, and the old frock-coat which Pierre gave me because he was ashamed to wear it any longer himself, it was so dirty and ragged!" He was not speaking the truth; but, seeing the rage that he was in, nobody ventured to protest any further.

Then, turning towards Silvere: "It's very stupid of you to defend them!" he added.

"They robbed your mother, who, good woman, would be alive now if she had had the means of taking care of herself." "Oh! you're not just, uncle," the young man said; "my mother did not die for want of attention, and I'm certain my father would never have accepted a sou from his wife's family!" "Pooh! don't talk to me! your father would have taken the money just like anybody else.

We were disgracefully plundered, and it's high time we had our rights." Then Macquart, for the hundredth time, began to recount the story of the fifty thousand francs.