The trial of the Cooper and his accomplices was a small affair, and had not attracted many listeners, for these smuggling and coining cases were apt to be dull. As a matter of fact, there would not have been a soul present, if the accused had not had the most popular of counsels to defend them – Maître Henri Robart!

Fandor joined a group who were evidently on familiar terms, and, although he had not seen her for many a day, he at once recognised Mother Toulouche by her remarkable appearance and grotesque attire. He had had so many other irons in the fire, that he had not followed this smuggling case at all closely: he was surprised, therefore, to see Mother Toulouche in the little passage adjoining the court, for he had the impression that the old receiver of stolen goods had been under lock and key for some weeks...

She was now being interviewed by one of his colleagues.

Fandor went up to them.

Though she had not been accused of anything so far, the old store-keeper was vehemently protesting her innocence.

“Yes,” she declared to her interviewer, “it is abominable, when such things are discovered all of a sudden!”

Mother Toulouche went on to explain that on Clock Quay she rented a small shop for the sale of curiosities; that she was an honest woman, who had never wronged a soul by as much as a farthing: all she asked was to be left in peace to earn a decent living, so that she could retire from business some day or other. Everyone had a right to ask as much as that! Her store consisted of two rooms and an underground cellar, in which she had put a quantity of old odds and ends, when she had moved to her present abode.

She never descended to this cellar, never at all: she was far too much afraid of rats to venture down there! Not she! But, one day, if you please, when she was quietly engaged in mending some old clothes, the police had suddenly burst into her store!... And they had accused her of receiving smuggled goods and false money, and she didn’t know what more besides!.

The police, not content with this, had made her go down to the cellar to find out whether or no there were such things in the second cellar belonging to her store!... Who had been most surprised then? Why who but Mother Toulouche, who, until that very minute, had not known that this second cellar existed! How then was she to know that it connected with the sewer, still less that the sewer opened on to the Seine, and that by the Seine arrived bales of smuggled goods, which were concealed in her cellar by the smugglers?... Fortunately, the judges had understood this, and after twenty-four hours’ detention on suspicion, Mother Toulouche had been set at liberty!