"Well! the scoundrels have bought the Hôtel Duvillard. I'm hemmed in on all sides!" He was waving his long arms about, in a burst of fury which made his white mane stand up on end. "A regular underhand affair," he resumed. "But it seems that the hotel belonged to the Crédit Immobilier, whose president, Baron Hartmann, has just sold it to our famous Mouret. And now they've got me on the right, on the left, and at the back, just in the way that I'm holding the knob of this stick in my hand!" It was true, the sale must have been concluded on the previous day. Bourras's small house, hemmed in between The Ladies' Paradise and the Hôtel Duvillard, clinging there like a swallow's nest in a crack of a wall, seemed certain to be crushed, as soon as the shop galleries should invade the hôtel. And the time had now arrived, the colossus had outflanked the feeble obstacle, and was investing it with its piles of goods, threatening to swallow it up, absorb it by the sole force of its giant aspiratory powers. Bourras could well feel the close embrace which was making his shop creak. He thought he could see the place getting smaller; he was afraid of being absorbed himself, of being carried off into kingdom come with his sticks and umbrellas, so loudly was the terrible machine now roaring. "Do you hear them?" he asked. "One would think they were eating the very walls! And in my cellar and in the attic, everywhere, there's the same noise--like that of a saw cutting through the plaster. But never mind! They won't flatten me as easily as they might a sheet of paper. I shall stick here, even if they blow up my roof, and the rain falls in bucketfuls on my bed!" It was just at this moment that Mouret caused fresh proposals to be made to Bourras; they would increase the figure of their offer, they would give him fifty thousand francs for his good-will and the remainder of his lease. But this offer redoubled the old man's anger; he refused in an insulting manner. How those scoundrels must rob people to be able to pay fifty thousand francs for a thing which wasn't worth ten thousand! And he defended his shop as a young girl defends her virtue, for honour's sake.