The notary himself, by courtesy, was appointed executor.  To him Pons left a picture of price, such a thing as the law permits a notary to receive.  Trognon went out and came upon Mme. Cibot in the salon.

“Well, sir, did M. Pons remember me?”

“You do not expect a notary to betray secrets confided to him, my dear,” returned M. Trognon.  “I can only tell you this—­there will be many disappointments, and some that are anxious after the money will be foiled.  M. Pons has made a good and very sensible will, a patriotic will, which I highly approve.”

La Cibot’s curiosity, kindled by such words, reached an unimaginable pitch.  She went downstairs and spent the night at Cibot’s bedside, inwardly resolving that Mlle. Remonencq should take her place towards two or three in the morning, when she would go up and have a look at the document.

Mlle. Brisetout’s visit towards half-past ten that night seemed natural enough to La Cibot; but in her terror lest the ballet-girl should mention Gaudissart’s gift of a thousand francs, she went upstairs with her, lavishing polite speeches and flattery as if Mlle. Heloise had been a queen.

“Ah! my dear, you are much nicer here on your own ground than at the theatre,” Heloise remarked.  “I advise you to keep to your employment.”

Heloise was splendidly dressed.  Bixiou, her lover, had brought her in his carriage on the way to an evening party at Mariette’s.  It so fell out that the first-floor lodger, M. Chapoulot, a retired braid manufacturer from the Rue Saint-Denis, returning from the Ambigu-Comique with his wife and daughter, was dazzled by a vision of such a costume and such a charming woman upon their staircase.

“Who is that, Mme. Cibot?” asked Mme. Chapoulot.

“A no-better-than-she-should-be, a light-skirts that you may see half-naked any evening for a couple of francs,” La Cibot answered in an undertone for Mme. Chapoulot’s ear.

“Victorine!” called the braid manufacturer’s wife, “let the lady pass, child.”

The matron’s alarm signal was not lost upon Heloise.

“Your daughter must be more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are afraid that she will catch fire by touching me,” she said.

M. Chapoulot waited on the landing.  “She is uncommonly handsome off the stage,” he remarked.  Whereupon Mme. Chapoulot pinched him sharply and drove him indoors.

“Here is a second-floor lodger that has a mind to set up for being on the fourth floor,” said Heloise as she continued to climb.

“But mademoiselle is accustomed to going higher and higher.”

“Well, old boy,” said Heloise, entering the bedroom and catching sight of the old musician’s white, wasted face.  “Well, old boy, so we are not very well?  Everybody at the theatre is asking after you; but though one’s heart may be in the right place, every one has his own affairs, you know, and cannot find time to go to see friends.  Gaudissart talks of coming round every day, and every morning the tiresome management gets hold of him.  Still, we are all of us fond of you—­”