Balivan confounded himself in apologies. But the bourgeois, who had had a horrible fright, continued to shout. The soldiers who were on guard at the theatre came up, with several policemen, and a crowd soon assembled. The young men were surrounded, and the man whom Balivan had attacked pointed them out to the soldiers, saying in a voice rendered almost inaudible by terror: "Arrest those four men. They're all thieves; they tried to rob me of five hundred francs, and I had only forty sous about me! This one threatened me; he tried to murder me with an olive. Arrest all four." The young men tried to explain to the soldiers that it was all the result of a jest. But the officers took them away, saying: "You may explain at the station." "That miserable Tobie!" muttered Mouillot; "a nice mess he's got us into with his olives!" "And my appointment!" thought Albert. "God grant they don't keep us long!" "It is all Balivan's fault," said Célestin. "With his absent-mindedness, he was perfectly certain to make some blunder." As for the young artist, he stalked along in the middle of the crowd, thinking: "Yes, I will paint her with a country scene for a background." XIX THE QUARREL AND THE RECONCILIATION On the day following that on which Elina had asked the messengers about Paul, he returned to his place with his _crochets_, wearing his jacket and cap; but his face was noticeably paler, his features more drawn, than before his prolonged absence. The young messenger seated himself in his usual place, nodding to Sans-Cravate and Jean Ficelle, who were there before him. The former abruptly turned his head away when he saw Paul, and clenched his fists with an angry gesture; but Jean Ficelle, on the contrary, assumed his playful expression and walked to Paul's side. "Hallo! hallo! here's the prodigal son back again! Yes, it's him, sure enough. Is it possible, Paul, that you've come back to sit alongside of us on a street corner? are you going to be a messenger?" "I have never ceased to be one," replied Paul, looking earnestly at the house in which Elina worked. "That's a good one! How about the time we met you dressed like a swell? I don't think you was doing errands much just then! You was on a spree, you know, and it seems to have lasted a long while! Ten days of it! Gad! that's a whole carnival, sure enough!" "You are mistaken; I haven't been on a spree; you know perfectly well that it's not my custom." "Not with us, that's true; but you play the nobleman with your mistresses, it seems. Oh! I can understand that when a man's been doing the handsome thing by his girl for ten days, he don't feel inclined to treat his friends to a glass. And then, you have so many girls at once! Ha! ha! you're a Don Jean, as they say in fashionable society. But you must take care that you don't get robbed yourself. Bless me! those things happen to everybody."