dinner, washed down with plenty of good wine.

She also loved her husband; and, about the time M. Patrigent was leaving the hospital, she began to be worried that her "little man" had not returned to dinner. She was about to sit down without him, when the hotel-boy cried out: "Here is monsieur."

And Fanferlot appeared in person.

Three years before, Fanferlot had kept a little office of secret intelligence; Mme. Alexandre was a trader without a license in perfumery and toilet articles, and, finding it necessary to watch some of her suspicious customers, engaged Fanferlot's services; this was the origin of their acquaintance.

If they went through the marriage ceremony for the good of the mayoralty and the church, it was because they imagined it would, like a baptism, wash out the sins of the past.

Upon this momentous day, Fanferlot gave up his secret intelligence office, and entered the police, where he had already been occasionally employed, and Mme. Alexandre retired from trade.

Uniting their savings, they hired and furnished the "Archangel," which they were now carrying on prosperously well, esteemed by their neighbors, who were ignorant of Fanferlot's connection with the police force.

"Why, how late you are, my little man!" she exclaimed, as she dropped her knife and fork, and rushed forward to embrace him.

He received her caresses with an air of abstraction.

"My back is broken," he said. "I have been the whole day playing billiards with Evariste, M. Fauvel's valet, and allowed him to win as often as he wished, a man who does not know what 'the pool' is! I became acquainted with him yesterday, and now I am his best friend. If I wish to enter M. Fauvel's service in Antonin's place, I can rely upon M. Evariste's good word."

"What, you be an office messenger? you?"

"Of course I would. How else am I to get an opportunity of studying my characters, if I am not on the spot to watch them all the time?"

"Then the valet gave you no news?"

"He gave me none that I could make use of, and yet I turned him inside out, like a glove. This banker is a remarkable man; you don't often meet with one of his sort nowadays. Evariste says he has not a single 

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