“Found the Rue Clarisse rather slow, and came off here where you can be your own man, so to speak?”

“I was not actuated by any such motive,” coldly replied Monsieur Bouchard. “I came here because the rooms I had in the Rue Clarisse were cramped, and I needed to have more space, as well as to be in a more convenient quarter of Paris.”

De Meneval’s bright eyes had been travelling round the walls, and Monsieur[39] Bouchard remembered, with cold chills running up and down his back, the pictures of his predecessor—that scampish young journalist, Marsac—so indiscreetly left hanging by Pierre. A shout of laughter from de Meneval, and a pointing of his stick toward the red-and-gold young ladies, showed Monsieur Bouchard that his apprehensions were not unfounded.

[39]

“Is that your selection, Papa Bouchard?” cried the reprobate captain. “Never saw them before—you must have kept them in hiding in the Rue Clarisse. I’ll tell Léontine,” and the captain laughed loudly.

He had a great haw-haw of a laugh that had always been particularly annoying to Monsieur Bouchard, and this thing of calling him “Papa” Bouchard was an unwarrantable liberty. So he replied, freezingly:

“You are altogether mistaken. These extraordinary prints were left here by my predecessor, a very wild[40] young journalist—I believe most young journalists are very wild—and they come down to-morrow. It would seriously disturb me to have those ballet pictures around.”

[40]

“Well, now,” said de Meneval, with an unabashed front, “I think you are too hard on the poor girls. I have known a good many of them in my life—taken them to little suppers, you know—and generally they’re very hard-working, decent girls. Some of them have a husband and children to help to support. Others have dependent parents. They’re unconventional—very—and like to eat and drink at somebody else’s expense, but that’s no great harm. Plenty of other people in much higher walks of life do the same.”

“I don’t care to discuss ballet girls with you, Monsieur de Meneval,” remarked Monsieur Bouchard, with great dignity.

“But I want to discuss them with you,” answered de Meneval, with what[41] Monsieur Bouchard thought most improper levity and familiarity. “That’s what I came to you this evening about. That’s why I have been haunting the Rue Clarisse during the last ten 

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