She considered the opinions of the grocer insulting to Maximilian the First.
Already displeased with the manners of Descoings, this illustrious "tricoteuse" of the Jacobin club regarded the beauty of his wife as a kind of aristocracy.

She infused a venom of her own into the grocer's remarks when she repeated them to her good and gentle master, and the poor man was speedily arrested on the well-worn charge of "accaparation." No sooner was he put in prison, than his wife set to work to obtain his release.

But the steps she took were so ill-judged that any one hearing her talk to the arbiters of his fate might have thought that she was in reality seeking to get rid of him.

Madame Descoings knew Bridau, one of the secretaries of Roland, then minister of the interior,--the right-hand man of all the ministers who succeeded each other in that office.

She put Bridau on the war-path to save her grocer.