"House owner! You can boast of being a house owner only because for the last twenty years you've been putting pepper in your brandy and chicory in your coffee, as well as dipping your candles in boiling water to melt off the tallow without anybody's discovering it, and with the proceeds of this cheating you've perhaps bought a few houses. I don't see anything to be so proud of in that, do you?" "I have been a grocer, it is true. It is also true that I made money in my business, and I am proud of the fact, madame." "You have no reason to be. Besides, if you are rich, how can you have the heart to torment a worthy man like the commander merely because he is a little behind in his rent--for the first time, too, in over three years." "I don't care anything about that. Pay me my money, or out you go! It is very astonishing; people can't pay their rent, but they must have gardens and every modern convenience, these fastidious tenants of mine!" "Come, come, M. Bouffard, don't go too far or you may be sorry for it! Of course he must have a garden, this brave man, crippled with wounds, for a garden is his only pleasure in life. If, instead of sticking to your counter, you had gone to the wars like the commander, and shed your blood in the four quarters of the globe, and in Russia, you wouldn't own any more houses than he does! Go, and see if you do!" "Once, twice, I ask, will you pay me to-day?" "Three times, a hundred times, and a thousand times, no! Since the commander's wound reopened, he can sleep only with the aid of opium. That drug is as costly as gold itself, and the one hundred and fifty francs he has received has had to go in medicine and doctor's visits." "I don't care anything about your reasons. House owners would be in a nice fix if they listened to their tenants' excuses. It was just the same at one of my houses on the Rue de Monceau where I've just been. My tenant there is a music teacher, who can't pay her rent because she's been sick, she says, and hasn't been able to give lessons as usual. The same old story! When a person is sick, he ought to go to the hospital, and give you a chance to find another tenant." "The hospital! Commander Bernard go to the hospital!" cried the now thoroughly exasperated housekeeper. "No, not even if I have to go out as a ragpicker at night, and nurse him in the daytime, he sha'n't go to the hospital, understand that, but you run a great risk of going there yourself if you don't clear out, for M. Olivier is coming back, and he'll give you more kicks in your miserable stomach than you have hairs in your bearskin cap." "I would like to see any other house owner who would allow himself to be abused in this fashion in his own house. But enough of this. I'll be back at four o'clock, and if the hundred and fifty francs are not ready for me, I'll seize your furniture." "And I'll seize my fire-shovel and give you the reception you deserve!"