"Yes, very well acquainted. Ah! Mon Dieu! You are my friend, you will keep my secret, and if you will not repeat this in Versailles--I will tell you how it is--we have one in the family." "One what?" "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, talking and jabbering. The Saturday before, Joseph had a game of billiards with the murderer." "With the murderer!"