drink, and even to wear. He privately determined before finishing his dinner that he would get a new tailor next day and have some clothes made in the latest fashion.

“Have you found out the names of any persons in the house?” asked Monsieur after dinner, lighting a cigar. It was his second; in the Rue Clarisse he was limited to one.

“No one at all, sir,” replied that double-dyed villain, Pierre. “It isn’t judicious to know all sorts of people. I intend to forget some I know.”

Monsieur Bouchard turned in his chair and looked at Pierre; the fellow really seemed changed into another man from what he had been for thirty years. But to Monsieur Bouchard the change was not displeasing. He felt a bond between himself and Pierre,[34] stronger in the last half-hour than in the thirty years they had been master and man. They exchanged looks—it might even be said winks—and Monsieur Bouchard poured out another glass of champagne—his third. And what with the wine and the dinner, he was in that state of exhilaration which the sense of liberty newly acquired always brings.

[34]

“Monsieur won’t want me any more to-night?” asked Pierre.

“No,” replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but—be sure to be here at—” he meant to say at ten o’clock that night, but changed his mind and said, “seven o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“Certainly, sir,” answered Pierre. “I expect to be home and in bed before three.”

And he said this with such a debonair manner that Monsieur Bouchard was secretly charmed, and privately determined to acquire something of the same tone.

[35]Pierre gone, Monsieur Bouchard made himself comfortable in an easychair and began toying with a fourth cigar. How agreeable were these modern apartments, after all—everything furnished, every want anticipated—all a tenant had to do was to walk in and hang up his hat. Then his thoughts wandered to that very pretty woman who had travelled in the same train with him that day to St. Germains, and the day before to Verneuil, whither he had gone to look after some property of Léontine’s. Madame Vernet was her name—it was on her travelling bag—and she was a widow—that fact had leaked out ten seconds after he met her. But she was so very demure, so modest, not to say bashful, that she seemed more like a nun than a widow. And so timid—everything frightened her. She trembled when the guard asked her for her ticket, and clung quite 

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