“The taverner, running up, seeing the table knocked over, the wine spilt, and Friar Ange with one foot on the cutler’s head, swinging a stool with which he struck anyone approaching him, this vile taverner swore like a real devil and called for the watch. Monsieur Ménétrier, do come at once and take the little friar out of the watch’s clutches. He is a holy man, and quite excusable in this affair.” My father was inclined to oblige Catherine, but for this once the lacemaker’s words had not the effect she expected. He said plainly that he could not find any excuse for the Capuchin, and that he wished him to get a good punishment by bread and water in the darkest corner of the cellars of the convent, of which he was the shame and disgrace. He warmed up in talking: “A drunkard and a dissipated fellow, to whom I give daily good wine and good morsels and who goes to the tavern to play the deuce with some ill-famed creatures, depraved enough to prefer the company of a hawking cutler and a Capuchin friar to that of honest sworn tradesmen of the quarter. Fie! fie!” Therewith he suddenly stopped his scoldings and looked sideways on my mother, who, standing up at the entry to the staircase, pushed her knitting needles with sharp little strokes. Catherine, surprised by this unfriendly reception, said drily: “Then you don’t want to say a good word to the taverner and the sergeant?” “If you wish it, I’ll tell them to take the cutler and the friar.” “But,” she replied, and laughed, “the cutler is your friend.” “Less mine than yours,” said my father sharply. “A ragamuffin and a humbug, who hops about----” “Oh!” she exclaimed, “that’s true, really true, that he hops. He hops, hops, hops!” And she left the shop, shaking with laughter. My father turned round to the priest, who was picking a bone: “It is as I had the honour to say to your reverence! For each reading and writing lesson that Capuchin friar gives to my child, I pay him with a goblet of wine and a fine piece of meat, hare, rabbit, goose, or a tender poulet or a capon. He is a drunkard and evil liver!” “Don’t doubt about that,” said the priest. “But if ever he dares to come over my threshold again, I’ll drive him out with a broomstick.” “And you’ll do well by it,” said the priest; “that Capuchin is an ass, and he taught your son rather to bray than to talk. You’ll act wisely by throwing into the fire that ‘Life of St Catherine,’ that prayer for the cure of chilblains and that history of the bugbear, with which that monk poisoned your son’s mind. For the same price you paid for Friar Ange’s lessons, I’ll give him my own; I’ll teach him Latin and Greek, and French also, that language which Voiture and Balzac have brought to perfection. And in such way, by a luck doubly singular and favourable, this Jacquot Tournebroche will become learned and I shall eat every day.”