The latter, hoping to allay his wife's irritation, said, very calmly: "Now, Madelaine, explain yourself tranquilly; we are both sufficiently roused to pay attention to what you would say." "That's lucky; what I have to say will not take long. Idler, good-for-nothing! see now, one of your best customers, the valet-de-chambre of the Member of Parliament, no less a personage, has gone to our neighbor Mathurin." "What, we're losing our custom?" demanded the tailor of his apprentice with an air of indignation, coward-like, designing to turn the wrath of his wife on the unhappy Kraft. "What, Martin, do you give us such customers? Are you not ashamed? 'Tis not mine who treat us thus. Gracious! mine are as faithful to me as the thread to the needle--as the thimble to the finger--as--" "Tut, tut, tut," said Dame Landry, interrupting, "how you chatter, Master Landry! That's the reason why the clerk of M. Buston, the attorney at Châtelet, who has always been your customer, left you more than a month ago--even he--for that cursed Mathurin!" "What do you mean, woman? This Mathurin surely must employ some sorcery thus to draw those customers to his shop," said Landry, sadly; "for I defy any workman of the honorable corporation of tailors to do better or stronger sewing than mine. St. Genevieve, patroness of our good city, knows if I cabbage the thousandth part of a quarter of a yard of the cloths which are intrusted to me. It is the same with the trimmings; and--" "Heavens! M. Landry, give me rest from the enumeration of your good qualities. Our neighbor Mathurin is a knave, a cheat it may be; but at least he bends his wits to his work, he bestirs himself; he makes good acquaintances; he does not sit all day with his arms crossed as you do." "Excuse me, it is his legs, madame, which Master L. keeps crossed all day," said Kraft, sententiously. "Hear that animal!" cried the housewife, throwing a meaning look at the apprentice, who lowered his head and began to work furiously with his goose. "You have no good customers," said Dame Landry, "none but mechanics, attorneys' clerks, dry-salters workmen--not a single gentleman." "As for gentlemen, Madelaine," replied the tailor, hazarding a timid reproach, "I have one among my customers, and you prevent me from working for him." Madelaine colored with anger, and exclaimed: "Do you dare to talk to me of your Marquis, of your _Monsieur le Charmant_, of that sharper, who has owed us three hundred livres for more than a year, and from whom you have never got the first red cent?" "And yet, ma'am, you wish the custom of such gentlemen!" "I wish the custom of gentlemen who pay, and not of knaves who only walk the streets of Paris, with swords at their sides, and hats cocked awry, to dupe imbeciles like you,--poor trades-people like us." The tailor raised his hands towards heaven.